Sweet Chestnut | Castanea sativa | Bareroot Saplings

Sweet Chestnut Plants - Delivered by Mail Order from the Nursery with a 1 Year Guarantee

Sweet Chestnut, Castanea sativa, is a large, vigorous tree with good autumn colour and edible nuts. It will grow on any well drained soil apart from chalk.
Sweet Chestnut is not suitable for a clipped hedge.
It can be grown as a screening tree up to about 30 metres high. It is a good, tall windbreak tree and is ideal for coppicing.
The plants on this page are young saplings. You can also buy larger Sweet Chestnut trees here.
Browse all of our other varieties of Chestnut trees.

Sweet Chestnut plants are only delivered bareroot, during winter (Nov-March).

Choosing a size:
When you are ordering a large quantity of Sweet Chestnut for a big planting project, we suggest that you buy 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, 120/150cms tall plants if you are just buying a few or if you want tall trees quickly.
All of our young trees are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

General description of Castanea sativa plants:
Sweet chestnut is a vigorous, deciduous tree with glossy green, lance head shaped leaves that have toothed edges and turn a smoked gold colour in autumn. Its yellow catkins are pollinated by bees and ripen into eating chestnuts in early winter, which are at their best after being roasted over a fire.
Old trees will develop monstrously thick, spreading branches and beautiful bark with a lattice of crossing ridges, but for the first hundred year or so of their lives, they will usually grow straight upwards with a fairly narrow canopy.

History & uses of Castanea sativa:
This is a very long lived tree that is great for coppicing. Most of the oldest, most magnificent old sweet chestnuts were coppiced in the past, which greatly adds to their life span and character: the oldest trees may be up to 4,000 years old. The timber is good for stakes and outdoor furniture, as the wood is very resistant to rotting. However, once a trunk or branch grows to over 50cms in width, it will tend to split when it is sawn into planks.