This one's as old as the hills - my university student market hills, at least - but cool nonetheless. iwantoneofthose.com has started selling grow-your-own-tree pots containing the seed of a silver birch tree that just needs water to get started. The deal-maker is that the seeds are from Sherwood Forest silver birches, thus allowing you to grow a small forest in your back garden and pretend to be Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (yes, the film that gave us the Bryan Adams' song that just wouldn't die). As a species, silver birch live fast and die young, growing quickly to 3 metres in three years but dying young - for a tree - when they get to around a hundred. Of course, as well as pretending to be Kevin Costner, you'll also be taking carbon dioxide out of the air, as that's what green things like to eat. At £13 each, these are more expensive than buying a bunch of seedlings, but you're virtually guaranteed success with a peat-filled pot like this. Plus the pot's organic, too.
Peat filled pot? Not sure I like the sound of that!
http://www.rspb.org.uk/gardens/whatyoucando/peat/index.asp
Nevertheless, this site is an excellent collection of ideas. I'm really enjoying reading it!
caldini
I am a nurseryman and although I would agree that planting any tree is a great thing to do and silver birch is a good choice for most gardens, for £13 readers should be aware that they can buy an established one or two year old sapling (in peat or part peat compost) at around the same price.
Birch seed is also very fine and may not germinate unless kept in ideal conditions so 'guaranteed to grow' maybe not.