Trees
I’ve spent the last few months looking out on a very bare garden – now covered in snow. The only thing of interest today is our neighbour’s Scot’s Pine, which is blowing in the wind and providing shelter to a few small birds. It’s a very different outlook from the one we left behind when we moved here from Huddersfield three years ago; after 25years of conscientious planting and tending we’d created a very leafy garden with a hedge and several small trees. We didn’t realise how lucky we were ! Our new garden has no trees and not much to look at in the winter; and because we’ve no trees or foliage cover, we’ve no birds. (The cat doesn’t help either – and I think he may be the reason there’s no frog spawn in the pond – but that’s another story). It has made me realise how much we took our trees for granted in the previous garden, and how fundamental they were to the modest ‘web of life’ that had evolved. Not rocket science, I know, but sometimes we need a bit of personal experience to bring things home.
As someone who is passionate about wood and all things wooden, I clearly have a vested interest in trees, but it’s good to be reminded that their beauty and ‘usefulness’ starts long before they reach my workshop. The One Tree Project www.onetree.org.uk , which started with the felling of 170 year old Oak in 1998, was a brilliant way of honouring one particular tree, but my resolution is to pay a little more attention to those that are still gracing the landscape around me. I ought to plant a copse in the garden, but my ‘better half’ insists that she wants sunshine rather than shade, so as a compromise we will be planting a native hedge next weekend (weather permitting), and hoping for a less barren garden in years to come.
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Thankyou, Chris.
