This is my first project to achieve Project Lothlorien. Main purpose is to cover streets of the village and it’s surroundings with Linden trees. Lindens are ornamental trees. Its shadow is dense, autumn foliage is close resemblance to Mallorn trees described in Lord of the Rings. It’s a large tree as Mellyrn (plural of Mallorn). But the main reason I choose to plant Linden is its fragrand flowers. In north western Turkey, linden trees bloom in June and become very attactive for bees, birds, insects and humans.

This project involves other people’s participation. I am covering the streets they live. Since linden tree is a “to be adorned” tree, no one objected when I first decided to plant 25 Linden saplings last year (January 2017).

There are some sheep herds in the village. Sheeps can damage new saplings. And people don’t want to wait too long to see the blooms of the newly planted trees. Then I looked for at least 5 years old linden saplings in town of Biga. I was lucky that I could find from a supplier. In winter of 2017, I ordered 30 sapling and we (me and village folks) planted  them on the streets. The exact positions of trees are marked map below. This was the first phase of the project.

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The summer of Mediterranean is hot and dry. It can become hard even for drought tolerant species like Tilia tomentosa. Summer of 2017 was no exception and 7 of the saplings died (marked with an orange X below)

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This winter, January 2018, I’ve decided to buy another 25 Linden saplings. Two weeks ago those saplings were planted in place of the ones died last year and rest into new locations. The new 25 tree position marked green below. That was the second phase.

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Unfortunately we cannot spread trees evenly. There are electric power lines everywhere. Since linden is a large tree, we cannot plant them under power lines or any location close to them. We had to find enough empty space for them to flourish.

The hardest part of this project is watering trees during summer time. First two-three years we need to water newly planted trees once in two weeks. This job is getting harder when the number of trees grow.

These are the first two phases of Project Nanduhirion. Now spring is coming to western Turkey, so I should care them. Cleaning weeds, mulching, pruning…etc.