The Wind-Bent Elm That Outlasted Disease to Win UK Tree of the Year
A 150-year-old wych elm in Newcastle, County Down, known as the Bendy Tree has been named UK Tree of the Year.
The announcement was reported on 7 October 2026. The Woodland Trust runs the annual competition, which this year invited nominations on the theme of "against the odds" The Guardian.
The winning tree grows near-horizontally, its trunk bent sideways by strong seaside winds off the Irish Sea. It has endured extreme coastal weather and has resisted Dutch elm disease, a fungus that destroyed most of the UK's 30 million elms.
The tree dates to the mid-19th century. It was planted as part of a row of wych elms along Newcastle's promenade, intended to shelter the main street from sea winds. Many of those companion trees were later felled during town redevelopments, leaving the Bendy Tree as the last one standing. The Trust's listing dates that clearance for promenade redevelopment to the 1980s Woodland Trust. Its girth, the distance around the trunk, is listed as unknown.
Selection followed an expert panel shortlist of 10 trees. Voting closed on 29 September. Players of the Postcode Lottery supported the competition.
The shortlist spanned veteran yews, an urban ash and oaks shaped by accident and persistence. The Crowhurst Yew in Crowhurst, Surrey, was among the nominees. Villagers hollowed out its trunk in 1820 to create a parish meeting room inside the tree. The roof of that room collapsed in a storm in 1845, but the tree survived. The wooden door to the secret room remains to this day. The Trust lists the Crowhurst Yew at 4,000 years old with a girth of 10.03 metres, and records that it survived direct cannon fire, with a cannonball discovered embedded inside the trunk in 1820.
The Culmstock Yew in Culmstock, Devon, made the top 10 shortlist and is perched on top of a 20-metre-high church tower. The Bomber Oak near Uppingham was also shortlisted. A tree in Rutland that survived a World War Two plane crash was nominated for the award BBC.
Last year's honour went to a 75ft ash tree shading homes on one of Glasgow's busiest roads, identified by the Trust as Glasgow's Argyle Street ash, Tree of the Year 2025.
The broader context here is what survival means for elms in Britain. A wych elm that persisted through fungal pressure, salt-laden wind and the removal of its shelterbelt companions offers practitioners a reference point, like a field note for exposed coastal planting. It points to questions about seed sources for windy coasts, care for isolated older trees once a row is gone, and public value placed on persistence rather than size alone. What comes next will be monitoring as well as celebration: structural stability in a sideways-grown trunk, ongoing disease exposure, and footfall pressure on a promenade specimen now carrying a national title.
