Treeplanters
Suddenly, it seemed, the world awoke to the (newly nenamed) 'Climate Emergency' in 2019. Single use plastic, flightshaming, and plant-based diets all became the hot topics of the year thanks, in part, to the groundwork laid by David Attenborough's Blue Planet II series, Greta Thunburg's School Strike and the Extinction Rebellion Movement. This on top of a decade of increasing worldwide frustration at short-termist politics and increasing visibility of wealth disparity.
The solution: treeplanting.
Trees seemed to be a panacea. Symbols of longevity, nature and clean air. But for all the noise about planting trees, there was very little said about maintaining these new woodlands, or working to preserve our existing trees. The act of planting appeared to be enough as a feel-good response to deforestation of rainforests, to air pollution and a gesture of slow, quiet resistance to the fast-paced world that drives environmental damage.
Who are these treeplanters? Who were they before 2019? And what will happen to these new nascent ecosystems once the trowels are tidied and selfie sticks laid down?
Tom, Chichester
Tom wanted to live in the woods and be surrounded by trees. Searching for a house with woodland attached, it soon became apparent that this was a totally unaffordable dream — so he bought a small cottage and started planting trees.
His fields had previously been intensively grazed and the topsoil was so poor that continued hay production would have required fertiliser. Instead, he is choosing to 'rewild' in places — gradually returning the land to a state of minimal human control — and planting a mixed woodland.
The government offer grants to plant trees, but, he says 'you need a PhD in ecology' to understand the forms. Planting this woodland has also reduced the size of the land registerable as agricultural to just below the minimum eligible for Common Agricultural Policy payments: a double blow.
He planted some of the trees himself, with the help of his six-year-old daughter, but 600 was enough for him. Contractors are hard at work on the main plot and will have 2000 trees planted over three days, which over the next 10 years or so will become a peaceful campsite in the woods.
"I'd like to spend my days in the woods. I'd be as happy as a pig in shit," he tells me with a subdued grin.
Charles and Lisa, Shovelstrode Forest Garden
At Shovelstrode in East Sussex, Lisa and Charles have created a forest garden which incorporates a large ancient woodland of ash trees.
Forest gardening merges the biodiverse environment of forests and natural woodland with permacultural ideas of sustainability and food production. Yurts and cabins are set within the woods, dwarfed by the tall ashes, yet blending in as smoothly as the woods gradate out into grassy banks of the pond and garden.
But the mood is sombre. Ash dieback, a fatal fungal disease of these trees, struck last year and infected trees have been felled to slow the spread of the infection. Total destruction is almost inevitable, with 95% of ash trees in the country expected to eventually die. The forestry vehicles have ripped up the ground and recent rains have turned the area into a quagmire. Lisa and Charles' business is entirely based on this woodland environment, and if all the trees are doomed they question the wisdom of further felling. Maybe it would be better to condemn only those that could fall on the cabins, Charles muses as we clamber over brash and woodchips. Every hawthorn and oak is suddenly all the more precious. They hope that they can recover at least for the next season before tearing up the ground once again next winter for the seemingly inevitable second round of felling.
The weather was grey that day. Things seem brighter a few weeks later in the warm sun of spring. Most of the remaining trees seem healthy and increasingly it appears that the mud will drain away and the precious undergrowth is returning, along with the guests who come here to unwind in nature, 'forest bathing' and to learn traditional rural crafts such as green woodworking and beekeeping.
Willow cuttings resting in a bucket will be in the ground by now. These trees are some of the most reliable to plant and grow quickly, rapidly replacing some of the density of lost ash trees. A hint of new life amidst the mourning for the woods.
Phill, Hawkshurst Walled Garden
Phill is a hedgelayer. He keeps alive the ancient craft of cutting and weaving rows of trees into the hedgerows that are so iconic to the British landscape. Phill had been hedgelaying as a hobby for 10 years when he was made redundant and turned that pastime into a business. His first hedging job was the 440 yards of hedges around the community garden at Hawkshurst. He underquoted the job, but two years later, it's given him invaluable practice, opportunities to share his craft with volunteers and he's now faster than ever. "Now I can look at a volunteer's work and say 'all it needs is this, this and this.'" and he waves his billhook, miming the touching up of his student's pleacher.
Planting trees is only one brief moment in a tree's life, and hedges exemplify the benefits of good aftercare for trees: most hedgerows are centuries old. Hedgers often estimate the age of a hedgerow from the number of different tree species in the hedge, typically the same number as the age in centuries. A good hedgerow is a strong barrier, typically at a field boundary that is impossible for livestock to find a gap through. At the same time, they make wonderful homes for hedgehogs, dormice and all sorts of small birds. Much better than the barbed wire alternative.
Phill competes in hedgelaying competitions and has served as the Secretary for the South of England Hedgelaying Society. "My wife's not into any of this,' he tells me. "Occasionally she comes to crafty things though."
Hedgelaying is a slow art and often forgotten in the race of modernity. Hedges are taken out to merge fields into ever larger entities which are easier to farm with ever larger tractors. Now a tractor driver can trim remaining hedges in a few hours that would take days or weeks to lay. But these hedges will become thin at the base as the branches turn into treetrunks. People now tend to put in fences, but the best solution and the strongest, sturdiest barrier to keep livestock in or out of the field will be to lay the hedge once more in about 40 or 50 years' time, if it is trimmed a bit in the meantime.
The process is something like a woody puzzle, and often a thorny one too. Areas of a neglected hedge can be very thick with scrubby trees, or very sparse, and sometimes a landowner will want to incorporate a mature tree into the hedge itself. Phill clears out the scrub from the overgrown hedge and then gets to work on laying. Chainsaw buzzing and his billhook swinging, he cuts stems near their bases but not right through: a little is left over so that the little trunk can still be connected to the roots. He grasps and tugs each one over until it slopes just a little above the horizontal. These 'pleachers' soon stack up in neat parallel sloping lines as he works along the hedge. To finish this 20 metre section at the end of the day, I help him knock stakes into the ground with a special wooden hammer made of a crook of a tree which he calls a 'podger'. Some of these we harvested from the hedge just layed, others are coppiced hazel and we weave some of the pleachers around the stakes. We walk to the little hazel woodland
at the bottom of the hill and collect bundles of long, thin stems of three or four year old coppiced wood. We plait these around the stakes of the hedgerow and then give the stakes a final knocking in to squeeze it all together and make it strong.
Hot and sweating after a hard day's work, we pack up the tools on this rainy, chilly day. A good day's work well done to help these trees live for centuries yet.
More about Phill's work can be found at https://www.kentruralcrafts.co.uk/