Silver Birch Trees | Betula pendula | Saplings

Silver Birch Plants - Delivered by Mail Order from the Nursery with a 1 Year Guarantee

Silver Birch, Betula pendula, is a popular, fast growing, native tree with pretty white bark and an airy canopy that casts light, dappled shade. It is fast growing and will thrive on any soil except chalk. It needs full sun.
Silver Birch is not suitable for a clipped hedge. It can be grown as a screening tree up to about 25 metres high.
The plants on this page are young saplings. You can also buy larger Silver Birch trees here.
Browse all of our other varieties of Birch trees for sale.

Silver Birch plants are only delivered bareroot, during winter (Nov-March).

Choosing a size: When you are ordering a large quantity of Silver Birch for a big project, we suggest that you buy the smaller plants, graded at 40/60cms or 60/80cms. They are cheaper than large plants, easier to handle and more likely to cope well with poor conditions. Use the larger sizes for instant impact in a garden.
All of our young trees and shrubs are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

General description of Betula pendula plants:
Common Names: Silver Birch, Lady of the Woods
The pale, creamy-white bark of this elegant tree is its best feature, providing year round interest. It has little diamond shaped, mid-green leaves with serrated edges, dangling in fluttering streamers of thin, hanging side-branches. These turn yellow in autumn, which looks fantastic next to the white bark with the sun shining through it all.

History & uses of Betula pendula
Silver birch was a very useful tree in the past. Its bark was used for covering boats, canoes or for making the roof of a hut. A skilled worker could remove the outermost layer of bark without killing the tree: if you want to try your hand at this, late spring is the best time. An unpleasant tasting but effectively alcoholic mead can be made from Silver Birch sap, which tastes like sugary water in spring. Its resin was boiled down to make a decent glue.
Today, it is sometimes used as a coppice tree for firewood, harvested every 3/4 years. It isn't the best firewood in the world, burning bright and hot but quickly; its main strength as a source of firewood is that it will be ready to harvest before most other trees that were planted at the same time. Artist grade charcoal is made from the bark.