Let's start at the very beginning...

... a very good place to start!

And let this be the official beginning of a campaign for Mr. Graham Tuley to be awarded a Nobel Prize.  I'm serious.  Tree tubes are the single most important invention in tree establishment, and given the monumental importance of successful tree establishment and reforestation it's not a stretch to say that tree protectors are one of the most important inventions of the last century.  The iPod plays music.  Tree tubes heal the planet.

Treeshelters - as they were known in their early days - were developed by Mr. Tuley in 1979.  Tuley was a forester with the UK Forestry Commission.

Frustrated by continued failures in hardwood establishment - primarily English oak (or, as the British call it, common oak) and sessile oak - due to increasing levels of deer and rabbit browse, Tuley struck upon the idea of forming translucent plastic tubes around each seedling.  The idea was essentially to provide "safe passage" past the worst of the deer browse, while still giving the seedlings plenty of sunlight for growth.

The potential benefits in terms of animal browse were immediately obvious.  The wire or plastic mesh guards in use at the time had many failings; they were cumbersome to apply, and shoots often grew through the mesh to either get browsed by deer or later become girdled by the mesh itself.

Known in those early years as Tuley Tubes these solid translucent plastic tubes would clearly provide complete protection from animal browse until the seedling grew out the top.  The question was, how well would the trees grow inside the tubes?  The answer turned out to be:  Really, really well.  In Tuley's own words:

"(Tree) Shelters are 1.2 m tall plastic tubes which protect trees from animal damage and improve growth by creating a ‘greenhouse effect’ round each tree. After 3 years the mean height growth of sessile oak transplants in shelters was 142 cm compared with 45 cm in a mesh guard and 27 cm for unprotected trees and the average stem volume was 118, 37 and 19 cm³ respectively."

I think it's safe to say that Mr. Tuley was on to something big.

And after three decades of refinement - in design, protection methods, and guidelines for proper use - tree tubes have become and indispensable tool for successful reforestation worldwide.

There are so many heroes behind the treeshelter story.  And I'll keep telling them. Stay tuned!