The bendy elm crowned UK Tree of the Year

A "bendy" wych elm has been crowned the UK's Tree of the Year 2026 - the first time a tree in Northern Ireland has won the title.

The 150-year-old tree on the central promenade in Newcastle, County Down took more than 30% of the national public vote.

The theme of the Woodland Trust's annual competition was Against All Odds, with trees across the UK shortlisted for being impressive, beautiful and sometimes baffling examples of how nature can survive adversity.

The trust's Northern Ireland director John Martin said he had been rooting for the "whimsical" tree to win and said tens of thousands of people across the UK had clearly felt the same.

"It's a great testament to the resilience of nature."

The so-called Bendy Tree saw off competition from nine other entries, including a small yew growing from the masonry of a Devon church tower for 200 years, a Scottish ash that survived a lightning strike, and a Surrey yew, in which early 19th Century villagers found an embedded English Civil War cannonball.

The wych elm is the last remaining tree of a row that was planted along the original promenade in the 19th Century to shelter it from the sea breeze.

The rest of the trees were felled in the 1980s during redevelopment.

The wind it protected people from has made its trunk grow almost horizontal.

But its leafy rainbow over the path means it is still protecting people - just slightly differently.

"The council has put a bench underneath it where people can come and sit in the shade and enjoy views of the Mournes and of the sea," Martin said.

"I think the whimsical nature of it and the fact that it's showed a lot of resilience over 150 years has proven it the winner this year."

But it has survived more than the weather.

As a native elm tree, it also resisted Dutch elm disease, which destroyed most of the 30 million elms around the UK in the 1960s.

Martin said the tree had shown "remarkable resilience" to live as long as it has and it was great to see a tree of this age acknowledged.

The Ancient Tree inventory lead at the Woodland Trust, May Chemais, said it was an "astonishing and bizarre" tree that had endured a lot.

"The Bendy Tree has been blasted by extreme winds, over and over again, for well over a century.

"But it has continued to exist and remain rooted, adapting to its surroundings and flourishing into this unusual shape that is providing shade and joy to its community.

"We've all been through changes and hardships that have shaped who we are - I think that's why the Bendy Tree has struck a chord with people."

She added that older trees like the Bendy Tree are part of a community's culture, providing shade and stories.

Northern Ireland has one of the lowest rates of woodland cover in Europe (8.7%).

In UK terms, it lags behind Scotland (19%), Wales (15%), England (10%) and also the Republic of Ireland, which has 11% cover.

A tree-planting action plan has been launched, with a target of 12% woodland cover by 2050.

But tree-planting rates need to more than triple to get on track for that.