The 2025 ‘Tree Of The Year’ Is An Ash Growing In The Middle Of Glasgow

The 2025 ‘Tree Of The Year’ Is An Ash Growing In The Middle Of Glasgow

England’s coveted Tree of the Year award, on which GNN reports yearly, was won this year by a Scottish ash tree 75 feet-tall.

Towering above sandstone row houses, the tree on Argyle Street, in Glasgow has survived a recent ash tree plague, as well as the Clydeside blitz, and recent urban development.

It was described, the Guardian reports, as “quite the most graceful ash” by a local historian and writer, words which sit bracketed above the bar in the pub across the street from the tree.

Legend has it that it grew from an ash seed hidden within the roots of primrose brought back by a family on holiday.

The UK’s Tree of the Year competition is organized by the Woodland Trust, one of the country’s most active and influential woodland conservation group. Each year’s winner is then nominated to the European Tree of the Year contest the following year.

“Trees really matter to people, and this is clear from the response we’ve seen to the Argyle Street ash,” Adam Cormack, the head of campaigning at the Woodland Trust, said in a statement.

“Trees inspire us to write stories and create art, whilst connecting us to cultural legacies and a sense of place. We encourage people to notice and enjoy the trees around them, and learn more about how they benefit us—from boosting biodiversity and wellbeing, to mitigating the effects of climate change.”

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Other locals, including government officials and musicians, co-nominated the tree, which wins for Scotland for the second year in a row following last year’s triumph of the Skipinnish oak.

Other nominations this year which were perceived as strong favorites were the Beatles’ Ceder at Chiswick House, London, a tree which they climbed in a music video, and the “King of Limbs”—a particularly wide-armed oak tree in Wiltshire that inspired the name and iconography of the eponymous Radiohead album.

GNN is a sucker for big old trees, and often reports on the winners of the European Tree of the Year as well, which for several years running has been won by Poland, thanks in no small part to the country’s aggressive campaigning for its trees.

Incredibly, not only has Poland won back to back titles, but with the same tree: a color phase beech tree.

It would be fascinating to see how a contest like this could be organized in the US.