sap rising issue | spring 2016 | free

TREE STORIES, GREEN MEN, WOODWORK, ART, NEST-BUILDING, the newspaper for trees, woods and people SEASONAL FOOD AND MUCH MORE!

“

“

‘The Artist’s Tree’ by Alice Pattullo | SAP RISING BLUEBELL WOODS | LEAF! LEAF! Woodlands are not just a gathering ‘How does a moth experience the swooning scent of of trees. Paul Rutter explains how so many bluebells? In the soft light of the wood they they support more life than any glow like phosphorescent waters, casting a misty blue WOODFACT other habitat in Britain. Did you know that 60% of penumbra like the moon’s at a change in the weather. woodland wildlife is in decline? spring is a time of movement and new life. It blurs the blue meniscus lapping at the trees, As days lengthen and soils warm, the TREES OF LIFE enzymes in trees turn food starch into obscuring the ground, floating them.’ sucrose sugars – more sugar causes a flow of We need trees and woods more than ever. As we water into the cells, through osmosis, and a begin to experience the effects of climate change, from ‘Bluebell Picnic’ by Roger Deakin movement of water from soil to root pushes trees and woods are becoming increasingly sugary sap through the tree, enabling the important in mitigating the impact. Because of growth of buds and new leaves. Birdsong the pressure that human activity has placed on loudens, too, expressing a sense of urgency the natural world, woodlands have become ever in the hedges and trees as different species more precious for supporting and sustaining life. begin crafting new nests for new broods. A variety of plants, insects, birds, bats and other We see the arrival of spring in the pale wildlife have found their own niche in or around yellow of primrose blooms or the thick trees in which to live and reproduce. green of clustering bluebell leaves. We hear Our most ecologically valuable woodlands have often existed continuously for centuries as the birds chorus at dawn and dusk, and all day THE CLACTON their song grows, becoming the voice of fragments of much larger forests. The remaining SPEARHEAD 450,000 BC ancient woodlands, although much smaller, have spring. We also feel this movement between Two ice-ages-ago a yew branch is made become important ‘time capsules’. These precious into a spearhead and lost at what is winter and spring: the warmer air from the now Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. Rediscovered landscapes now harbour soils, plants and wildlife south-west seems to blow optimism our in 1911, it is one of the oldest-known that have not been damaged by modern fertilisers wooden human artefacts and way, while the budding trees and nest-busy indicates woodworking. and herbicides, over-grazing, ploughing, housing hedgerows compel us to move outside, to developments, or compaction and water-logging Editor walk, to explore. It is a time for rekindling Adrian Cooper often synonymous with industrialised forestry. friendships with neighbours, both human Art Direction Everything in these precious tree and woodland Gracie Burnett and animal. It is a time to emerge from ecologies is connected. The light, humidity, varying our winter dormancy and look anew at the Resident Storyteller temperatures of the soil, altitude, the local climate, Martin Maudsley world around us. the direction of slope and the type of management Throughout this year and next, Cover & Timeline Artist it has been subject to over previous centuries: all Alice Pattullo Common Ground and the Woodland have an impact on the character and ecosystem of Illustrators Trust is creating LEAF!, a series of seasonal a woodland. No two woodlands are the same. And Romy Blumel newspapers celebrating the cultural and the more complex these ecosystems, the richer the Matthew Richardson practical relationship between trees and biodiversity. The richer the biodiversity, the more Bea Forshall communities. We will be sharing tree Tim Hunkin robust and resilient the ecosystem becomes. stories, art, poetry, articles, tree maps, and Soil, undisturbed under the tree for centuries, Design ideas to help get us all talking about and is home to microscopic mycorrhizal fungi, which Common Ground celebrating the trees in our parks, orchards, Little Toller Books What is your tree story? The artist Romy Blumel shared her story with this ‘Tree of Life’. are crucial for long-term survival of trees. These allotments, woods, copses, spinneys and fungi have a symbiotic relationship with trees ‘Bluebells in Delcombe Wood’ by Nicholas Hely Hutchinson. Font forests. Our first issue is bursting with Sabon & Alice New resident storyteller, Martin hope of hearing the first returning chiffchaff of the and most other plants. They grow in and around stories inspired by the spring instinct to LEAF! year. Its distinctive call – like squeaking sneakers the roots absorbing carbohydrates from the tree colonised by many species of insects and fungi. Printing build nests. Birds, bats, bees, people: all Maudsley, steps out into the woods – is a springtime serenade that emotionally and giving back trace elements from rock and the These specialist insects and fungi break down Mortons Print, Lincolnshire WILDWOOD 5000 BC make their homes with trees. Branches, searching for the signs of spring. translates as: ‘all’s well with the world once soil to the tree and increasing the available water the dead wood fibres including the heartwood of Paper sticks, trunks, forks, hollows: these are the Trees, trees and more trees! 50% FSC and 50% recycled more’. If we’re lucky we might also catch sight of by extending the reach of the roots (reducing the tree, returning nutrients to the soil which are A dynamic patchwork of woodland raw materials that animals and people use a brimstone butterfly, fluttering slowly through stress to the tree during drought). They may, it is then recycled by the tree. Other insects such as the trees and areas of grassland in which the Distributed by grazing of deer and auroch (wild for building places to shelter in and raise the open spaces of the trees like a fragment of believed, also link trees together to prevent diseases hoverflies and bees need wildflowers as a nectar oxen) play an important part: shifting Woodland Trust THROUGH THE their young. sunshine; its buttery yellow colour allegedly giving source, which in turn pollinate plants in and by Philip Larkin grassland is invaded by trees. The Little Toller Books spreading. There are also many other micro- first trees to appear after the last When we asked the artist Alice Pattullo to WOODS rise to the word butterfly itself. According to Tove organisms and larger life forms found in woodland around the woodland. Ice Age were pine and birch, then Published by tell us her tree story, she replied by sending The trees are coming into leaf hazel. Ash appears relatively early Common Ground Jansson’s literary creature, Moomintroll, to see a soil, which all play a part in aerating the soil and A plant that is synonymous with ancient but sparsely. By the fifth millennium Lower Dairy us the wonderful artwork on the front cover. Spring is the season of signs. From the first yellow butterfly as your first of the year foretells breaking down organic material to create new soil. woodland in Britain is the bluebell Hyacinthoides BC, in the late Mesolithic, wildwood Toller Fratrum Like something almost being said; This is her ‘Artist’s Tree’. It is her story, twitchings of new life after winter’s solstice, there’s a fine year ahead. Amongst so many numinous As trees age the corky external bark of the non-scripta. Voted the UK’s favourite wild flower was dominated by lime in Lowland Dorset DT2 0EL The recent buds relax and spread, England, by oak and hazel in Wales, www.commonground.org.uk her voice, and it maps out why trees are a spring-tide of awakenings to be sensed and seasonal auguries, who could argue? trees thickens and becomes fissured, which is an a few years ago, it produces the iconic scene in western England, and south Scotland, Woodland Trust important to her, providing the materials savoured. First amongst the many floral harbingers As spring unfurls and uncurls, the leaves of increasingly attractive habitat to lichen, moss, our spring woodlands when a blue carpet appears Their greenness is a kind of grief. by elm and hazel in most of Ireland, Kempton Way and birch and pine in the Grantham for her craft and feeding her imagination. of spring is the primrose – literally ‘first flower’ – beech trees become luminous lime-green in the moths and flies. Trees with irregular stems and before the canopy shuts out the light. Scottish Highlands. Lincolnshire NG31 6LL We would like you to join Alice and the which graces woodlands and edgelands any time sunlight; like the stained-glass windows of a great branch formation are favoured by the lichens, A slow coloniser, native bluebells are an www.woodlandtrust.org.uk Is it that they are born again other people who have contributed to LEAF! from New Year to early summer. In January, a walk green cathedral. The warmer air is suffused with and these are often trees that have grown in open indicator of ancient woodland, and can also be And we grow old? No, they die too. by telling us why trees and woods are through the woods is often punctuated by primrose the sweet and savoury smell of wild garlic, also woodland where the living branches are low to the found along hedgerows and road verges. It prefers LEAF! © common ground 2016 important to you and your community. Is petals – lemon-sherbet yellow amongst the leaf known as ‘ramsons’, emerging in huge swathes ground and grow at right angles to the stem. slightly acidic soil and has a contractile root which Their yearly trick of looking new litter, their pale purity a vivid contrast against the under the trees and adding a welcome tasty tang to The leaves of the trees will be food plants to enables it to draw the bulb down into deeper COMMON GROUND is an there a special tree in your neighbourhood? Is written down in rings of grain. arts and environmental Do you have a cherished woodland that dark brown of the dead year. Primroses were once the sensation of spring. many moths and butterflies all adapted to different soil by up to 5 inches. It relies on an arbuscular charity working both locally and nationally to seek new, you walk in with your family and friends? one of the most commonly picked wildflowers, In other leafy places, but rarely amongst wild tree species and various parts of the tree. Birds mycorrhizal fungi to enhance its ability to obtain Yet still the unresting castles thresh imaginative ways to engage people Do you have a favourite tree, one that you and rural custom dictated that offering someone garlic, bluebells punctuate the palette of spring and bats will feed off this seasonal food supply. phosphorous from the soil. Rich in pollen and with their local environment and celebrate the intimate connections or children climb and build dens beneath? a posy with fewer than thirteen blossoms was a greens with their haze of intoxicating blue hues. The dappled shade created by a mixed canopy and nectar, they attract bumblebees and other insects. In fullgrown thickness every May. communities have with the landscape that surrounds them. Or is there an heirloom at home that was thinly veiled insult. Nowadays, it feels wrong to do Bluebell flowers were once worn on lapels to occasional open glades are all crucial elements of a The bulbs have been used in folk medicine as a Last year is dead, they seem to say, anything other than admire their vernal exuberance celebrate the feast day of England’s patron saint diverse woodland. diuretic and the sap has been used as a glue. THE WOODLAND TRUST is the cut, carved, whittled, sculpted from wood? UK's largest woodland conservation We would like see your stories, maps and in the places where they unexpectedly appear; like – St George – and they generally still chime in Our own connection with woodland is also Great Britain is home to almost half of the world Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. charity, and the leading voice florescent will-o’-the-wisps. time for the 23rd April. Older folklore associates important, and has for centuries influenced how population. Unfortunately, the plant is threatened for woods and trees. We inspire artworks so we can add your voice to the from High Windows © The Estate of Philip Larkin people to visit woods, plant trees, On willow trees and hazel coppices catkins, bluebells with the faerie folk, and it’s claimed that woodlands grow and develop. We have pollarded by the introduction of the Spanish bluebell that treasure wildlife and enjoy the Charter for Trees, Woods and People and Published in the The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin by Faber & Faber overwhelming benefits that woods publish them in the next issues of LEAF! which formed the year before and were held if you ever actually hear them ringing in the woods and coppiced trees, grazed woodland with escaped from gardens to hybridise with and simply and trees offer to our landscape tightly inconspicuous through winter, now then you’ve inadvertently walked out of this world livestock, even dragged logs along the ground, outgrow the more delicate bluebell. The leaves of and lives. The Woodland Trust is leading the call for a Charter unfasten and fluff-up to join the spring presage. and into the ‘otherworld’. . . giving opportunities for vascular plants to become bluebells are also delicate and, once bruised, can for Trees, Woods and People. For more information on the Charter Dangling down like lambs’ tails (another of established, and we need to continue playing a part struggle to photosynthesise, which reduces their visit treecharter.uk their evocative vernacular names), they dance Nature's Calendar in woodland management far into the future if our ability to produce flowers and seeds. In the ancient Paul Rutter is a woodland advisor and countryside manager for animatedly at the slightest stirring in the spring air. What we notice in our gardens and nearby streets woodlands, old and new, are to be places of high Langley Wood in Hertfordshire, over a hectare of Plantlife, an organisation that has Infused with associations of fertility, folklore holds matters. By observing and recording when frogs biodiversity. bluebell coverage has been lost to trampling. This for 25 years spoken up for our wild Share your tree story: that a profusion of catkins portends an abundance spawn or bluebells bud, you can join a team of Mature trees also have more niches in and on has led to creation of a new campaign to engage flowers, plants and fungi. [email protected] of babies; ‘plenty of catkins; plenty of prams’. citizien scientists who contribute to important the tree, including cavities and hollows, water springtime visitors, asking how best to conserve treecharter.uk/share-your-story A little after the first flowers, a walk in the environmental research. Record your seasonal pools, sap runs, decaying and dead wood. As these the bluebells at Langley while not discouraging our woods is imbued by anticipation; ears straining in signs at naturescalendar.org.uk features slowly develop around the tree, they are instincts to get into the woods this spring. 2 | spring 2016 spring 2016 | 3 | TREE STORIES TREE STORIES | LEAF! LEAF! The looming impact of climate Rebel, god, myth, cultural icon. . . change in our lives means trees Nina Lyon discovers the faces of our

James Ravilious (1939 – 1999) should be treasured more than ever, oldest and most elusive character. Nina Lyon is currently completing was a photographer who lived and argues Matt Larsen-Daw. a PhD about nonsense and worked in Devon, where he created metaphysics at Cardiff University. an ‘endless tapestry’ of rural life. Her recent book about the Green Common Ground worked with RETURN OF Man, Uprooted, is published by James in the 1990s, commissioning A CHARTER Faber and Faber. him to document the orchards of THE GREEN MAN south-west England. FOR TREES Two years ago, when I embarked on a hunt for In 1217, the Charter of the Forest was signed by the Green Man. He turned out to be a more Henry III at Runnymede and established rights of elusive creature than expected: was he a long- Kathleen Basford (1916 – 1998) access to the royal forest for ‘free men’, which had forgotten god of the Old Religion, a wilderness was a British botanist with a been eroded over time since the reign of William rebel or just an anarchic boozer as seen on pub special interest in genetics, who is the Conqueror. At a time when the royal forests signs across the land? also known for her research into the cultural significance of the WOODFACT were a vital source of fuel for cooking, heating and We draw these conclusions from a set of Green Man. In 1978, she published The UK has 13% woodland cover, less industries such as charcoal production, the Charter ancient images. The oldest are gory figures The Green Man, discussing how than any other European country. also protected rights such as ‘pannage’ (grazing for with vines growing from their mouth. Some are the figure was a motif for the ‘spiritual dimension of nature’ in pigs), ‘estover’ (collecting firewood), ‘agistment’ sunnier figures, sanguine-looking chaps with architecture. (grazing) and ‘turbary’ (cutting of turf for fuel). foliage for beard and hair. They only got their It set out and protected the relationship between name in 1939, when the amateur folklorist Lady the common man and the benefits of the ‘royal Raglan concluded that the foliate heads of her forests’ – which at that time consisted of fields and nearby churches and old folk traditions like ‘Halsdon Wood, Frosty Twigs’ by James Ravilious (c.1990). moorland as well as woods and trees. May’s Jack-in-the-Green were related. Spring is a wonderful time to seek where Wesley drew a crowd, is no longer to be The Charter of the Forest provides a window to a Today, historians dispute this: the foliate found except as a name on the map of north time in history when access to woods was integral heads are too disparate in character, there is no out local tree stories, both old and London, but names are still carved in the bark to life. Being denied access for grazing livestock, consistent historical thread to the Jack-in-the- new, as Sue Clifford explains. of the 800-year-old-oak at Mottisfont Abbey in collecting firewood and foraging for food was a real Green, and there is no evidence to suggest that Hampshire; how many tales could it tell? concern for the people of the time. some pagan forest-god was tacitly allowed into Trees draw us to them. The Major Oak in We no longer need to go into a wood to find food the darker recesses of the Church. But nobody VOICES FROM Sherwood was so visited that it had to have a for our families or animals, or the fuel to heat our seems to care too much about that: in our age of NEOLITHIC FARMING 4000 BC ring fence to keep people from trampling the homes. Trees have moved into the background of technology and human progress, the Green Man Neolithic people begin slowly converting THE WILDWOOD soil and endangering its life. A planting as recent our lives, and it becomes easier to ask: how and has come to mean something in his own right. wildwood, or the open areas within May morning sees many a leafy fellow shambling as the 1930s in Whipsnade, Hertfordshire, why are trees essential to pressing issues and the I lost count of the Green Men I encountered wildwood, into fields, pastures, heaths and moorland. The British Isles across hillsides, shaking through streets: from in response to the inspiration of the sunset demands of our twenty-first-century lives? on walls, amulets, arms. Publicans, artists and passes the stage of being half forest Rochester to Knutsford the Green Man, deciduous catching a copse on the hill, is now in demand The benefits we derive from trees today are retired accountants all seemed to find themselves probably at some time in the Bronze or AUROCH EXTINCTION 2000 BC early Iron Age, roughly between dancer, still eludes explanation. In his festive form for marriage blessings – this ‘Tree Cathedral’ different but no less important to our wellbeing. in him; I’d mention in passing that I was writing The Green Man on the roof bosses of Norwich Cathedral, Norfolk, from the Kathleen Basford archive. The native wildwood cattle, Aurochs, become extinct in the Bronze Age. 1300 and 700 BC. he seems to be a harbinger of spring, a celebration reminds us of the debt the great Gothic minsters Headlines abound on the potential role of trees in a book about the Green Man and all sorts of of regeneration. You may come across him in like Southwell and Beverley (both of them full of helping to prevent flooding, reduce air pollution unexpected people would declare an interest all had their own ideas. The unambiguous look to it for meaning, though, a meaning other guises: leafy faces carved in the cloisters, green men) owe to the forest. and improve quality of life. Meanwhile, concerns that far superseded mine. The Jack-in-the-Green conclusion that I could draw was that a part whose urgency has only strengthened as our misericords and roof bosses of cathedral or In Turkey, significant trees are ringed with are frequently voiced about the potentially traditions, which nearly died out in the postwar of our mindset that meditates on what lies relationship with non-human life becomes more church; Robin Hood in stories of the greenwood, red ribbon; in India, you may come across trees disastrous impact of climate change, and a looming period, are becoming fashionable again. Some beyond our immediate sphere of the human and precarious. The Green Man, who might once and in local plays from Devon to Scotland. He painted with vermillion or turmeric; in southern physical and mental health crisis. Morris dancing sides use a Green Man for their material resonated with him, in much the same have been intended as a grim-faced warning of must be ancient, why does he persist? France there is a time of the year when bottles are It feels as if trees should be treasured more than at summer performances; he still battles the Frost way that it resonates at the top of a mountain what might happen if you delve too deep into Of the creatures with which we share the hung from the boughs; in Somerset on old Twelfth any point in history, however the opposite seems to Queen on the bridge at Clun in Shropshire to or in the depths of a forest. the woods, has become a way of imagining a world, trees, above all, have engaged our Night, apple trees are wassailed with shotguns be the case. There is a growing disconnect between usher in the month of May. Once upon a time, Britain was covered in more equitable relationship with them, and THE SWEET TRACK 3806 BC imagination. Now, for most of us, they are simply and cider to ensure a good crop; in Japan sacred our children and nature. Trees and woods are lost Nobody could agree on exactly what the forest. We have shaped our land into our own like insistent spring shoots, he is having a A two-kilometre trackway across the ‘there’ in the street, down the lane, on the village trees are hung with pure white paper shapes; in from our lives and landscapes because they are Green Man was or what he stood for. They image and there’s not much forest left. We still resurgence. wetlands of the Somerset Levels is built out of long oak planks with green. We hardly give them a second thought. Buddhist ritual trees may be hung with beads or valued less than the developments that replace pieces of hazel, alder, ash, holly, willow red ribbons; in Africa, many dances have their them. The less aware, on a personal level, we and coppiced lime. Coppicing - the origin in offering thanks to the trees. become of trees and woods in the landscape, and community woodland. SEA HENGE 2049 BC cutting and re-cutting of small Local trees and woods bring A large oak and a circle of 55 underwood shoots from the base of a Trees are not simply landmarks, they have how they provide us with the essential elements of To spread the word of our woodland group we surrounding oak posts are used to tree - is a lynchpin of traditional ‘Trees are not simply helped us understand and explain our place in life, the less likely we will be to stand up for the communities together, explain attend lots of local events, such as Bassaleg Food construct one of two Sea Henges woodland management to this day. near the North Norfolk coast (later Neolithic woodsmanship was very landmarks, they have the world. They outgrow us and outlive us, they trees when they are at risk of being lost. Claire and Victoria from Save Our Festival, Rhiwderin Craft Fair and Bassaleg Rural inundated and preserved by rising sophisticated, crafting different sizes stay in one place reaching deep into the earth There has never been a more urgent time to Markets to engage with as many local residents sea-levels). Stonehenge is completed of different woods without the Woodland Bassaleg. about this time as is the nearby Wood use of metal tools. helped us understand and then up high into the sky. Many cultures reawaken our consciousness and re-articulate the as possible. We were invited to the Ahamadiyya Henge in Amesbury, Wiltshire. and explain our place have used trees to describe the ordinary events benefits and connections between trees and people. Women’s Climate Change Conference, where which remain inexplicable. . . where did we The Charter for Trees, Woods and People is a OUR WOOD we gave a presentation on our project, and in the world.’ come from, where are we going? The Tree of Life reminder: by putting trees back into the forefront have recently become a ‘Charter Branch’ for the with its roots in the underworld, its trunk in our of our imagination and our daily lives, we are also It all started in March 2015, when a group Charter for Trees, Woods and People. world and its branches in the heavens, recurs in keeping them in our landscapes. Across the UK, of residents from the villages of Bassaleg and Recently, we acquired a community allotment, Not so our forbears who must have thrilled to symbolic forms as diverse as the native American volunteer-led groups called Charter Branches (like Rhiwderin (Graig) in Wales got together to oppose too, in order to support our local Allotment the warmth and the green shoots after the perils totem pole and the Chinese pagoda. Save Our Woods Bassaleg on the opposite page) a planning application on an area of woodland Association and encourage people to get involved of winter, the return of hope. The moment of new What I have been describing is our cultural are springing up to connect people with the trees adjacent to Church Crescent and Ruperra Close in in the community and protect the green space that leaves meant new life for all. Why not celebrate? relationship with nature. Trees demonstrate how and woods in their communities. These groups Bassaleg, Newport (a piece of woodland which is is left – there is a surplus of plots in our area and, We inherited a land dominated by deciduous in every land (apart from the deserts of stone, will ensure that every person in the UK has the protected by a Tree Preservation Order). like woodlands, if our community doesn’t use the trees. We virtually carved ourselves out of the sand and ice) we have learned to live with nature, opportunity to help define the new charter, and Many more in our community supported us, land, it is at risk from development. forest, and went on to make half-timbered houses, using them, explaining things by them, telling to stand up for the trees and woods in their lives but felt that big business would win in the end, This time last year, none of us knew each TREE-TRUTH Sue Clifford is a writer, pioneering Britain's woodlands are being slowly tea clippers and men of war, elm water pipes, stories and moral tales through them. by becoming a ‘Charter Champion’. This is our as it often does. This was because another area other, and our love for the woodland, wildlife degraded by environmental pollutants, environmental campaigner and the hawthorn hedges, greenwood chairs, all from the Too many of our stories now are of chance to become part of history, and to help create of woodland in Bassaleg was destroyed illegally and community brought us together. We would face new threats from pests and co-founder of Common Ground with diseases, and continued destruction Angela King and Roger Deakin. trees about us; we ate and fed our beasts from decimation of giant sequoias for newspaper a future for the UK in which trees and people are in 2006, and a housing estate built where it once thoroughly recommend everyone gets involved in by officially sanctioned development. In 1994 she was awarded an MBE apples, hazel nuts, beech mast, acorns. Family pulp, acidification of rivers by exotic conifers, stronger together. Start a Charter Branch in your stood. This experience left the residents very angry, their local community and we encourage people to As of 2014 more than 500 ancient for services to the environment. woodlands are threatened with names Sawyer, Cooper, Woodward, Turner tell degradation of forest peoples; of loss of wisdom area: treecharter.uk/charter-branches/ upset and deflated. use and protect the green space they have left. damage or outright destruction of forbears whose tasks related to wood. Our about the things that trees can give us. But the overwhelming support and opposition from development. cultural connection with trees is there to be read How can we rebuild our sensibility towards to the development in March 2015 resulted in it all around us. As you pull down the blind with the trees as working partners, natural allies and being withdrawn – this restored the community’s Charter Matt Larsen-Daw is a campaigner little acorn at the end of the string, think that in cultural comrades? Planting trees is only part of faith in people power. It showed just how for Trees, Woods and the Woodland Trust’s Project the Channel Isles they still remember that the oak the answer. We have to care for the existing trees important the trees and the woods here are to us, and People Lead for the Charter for Trees, is the tree which attracts lightning: that toggle is a better than we do. and as a result we have decided to stay together Woods and People. symbolic protector of the house. May is a perfect time to take a good look at the and become a constituted group to ensure any Stand up for your local woods, trees and Many oaks stand vigil over their village, the trees in your neighbourhood to see if they need future applications to develop this woodland have community. Find out if there is a Charter Branch centre of the place, the very reason perhaps why help, to seek out their stories and to set ideas for a robust, community opposition. In fact, we are near you or start your own: the village is there. Gospel Oak, one of the many celebration and care in motion. now hoping to acquire the land and manage it as a treecharter.uk/charter-branches Victoria enjoys a community wood-working day. 4 | spring 2016 spring 2016 | 5 LEAF! | TREE STORIES TREE MAPS | LEAF! and spring flowering season, perhaps originating Jos Smith tells us why making maps from early grafting. Glastonbury is also a sacred of the trees or woods in your local David Inshaw is one of Britain’s site for those with pagan beliefs, associated with leading contemporary artists, whose area is a great way to get out and Jos Smith is a poet and writer paintings, etchings and drawings natural religion and the ancient seasonal cycles. undertaking British Academy of trees in the landscapes are in The sudden delight of blossom and fragrance in the explore this spring. research at Exeter University many private and public collections, month when daylight is in short supply naturally exploring the history of Common including the Tate Gallery. Ground. He is also leading ‘Exeter inspires awe in those witnessing this unexpected Tree Tales’, a project which seeks to renewal. Repeated attacks on the thorn cause deep record and map the tree stories of MEET THE Devon’s capital city. distress to members of both the established Church and pagan religions, but whether the tree is really NEIGHBOURS a victim of more militant tendencies on either side, as sometimes suggested in the press, is unclear. The If you were to make a map of the trees in your impulse to destroy any ancient site or beautiful area, what would it look like? Are there particular natural phenomenon is hard to fathom, and it may avenues, copses, clumps and woods that stand be that the poor flowering thorn suffers from its out? What memories do you and your neighbours own excess of meaning. have of distinctive local trees? Are there trees The powerful emotions still stirred by the associated with particular birds, seasons, flowers Glastonbury Thorn are redolent of older, unwritten or fruit – an island full of poplars that fill with THE ANKERWYCKE YEW lore. To bring hawthorn blossom into the house crows at dusk, a row of hawthorns that signal a Rivers and trees were sacred to the was – and in many minds, still is – regarded as turn in the weather when they blossom? Are there Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Witans, or King's Councils, were often held under foolhardy in the extreme. Despite its beauty, the conkers, apples, chestnuts, sloes? Do any have ROBIN HOOD important trees. Alfred the Great flowering thorn brought bad luck and even death names or histories, Gospel Oaks, Boundary Oaks, Nobody knows who the thirteenth- (Wessex King 871 - 899 AD) held century figure Robin Hood really Witans at Runnymede ('Rune-Mede' or on the family. There is something more to the Kissing Trees or Wishing Trees? Are there stand- was, nor if his Lincoln Green clothes meadow of magical charms), possibly pervasive fear of May flowers than a troubling out characters like the Major Oak of Sherwood stood for the Green Man and the under the branches of the Ankerwycke spirit of woodland spring, or if Yew, which took root at Runnymede smell, however. The urge to keep the hawthorn Forest or Wordsworth’s ancient Borrowdale Yews, 'Hood' meant 'Wood', or if the name around 2,000 years ago. This tree still out of the house may not be so different from the ‘Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved’? Have any 'Robin' denotes a nature spirit as stands at Runnymede today, rooted by The Community of Copthorne Village, Sussex, chose a local oak tree to create a map of their home ground. with the many traditionally magical the Thames in Surrey. hedge-layer’s urge to keep it down. trees been fought for in the past? What would you flowers named 'Robin' or 'Robert'. Cultural landscapes are studded with significant put on the map? A parish tree survey for Salcey Forest and eighteen thousand mature highway trees in the But he has entered our culture as a free man, one of the last woodland trees: ‘This is the very oak tree where William Some years ago now in the mid-1990s, Hartwell, just south of Northampton, records the city have been scheduled for felling as a result, outlaws, fighting over the rights Wallace rallied his men, . . . where Robin Hood Common Ground trialled a ‘Tree Tales’ initiative names of quite a number of the oak trees and one, including the twelve healthy, mature lime trees of to woodland. While the 'Greenwood' enters the culture of England as outwitted the Sheriff of Nottingham . . . here Dick in Northamptonshire, a little like the famous the Church Path Oak, even has its own plaque. ‘Rustlings Road’. This is half of the roadside trees a place of sanctuary, freedom and ‘The May Tree’ painted by David Inshaw. Turpin borrowed and (somewhat improbably) ‘Parish Maps’ of which there are now many There you’ll find Piddington Oak, Queen Hive in Sheffield, a city that proudly claims to be one nature, both real later returned a bag of gold. . .’ Or, moving further thousands. The result was a large map of the Oak, and Milking Oak, so named because its of the greenest industrial cities in Western Europe. and imagined. Merry May has long been celebrated hawthorn has always caused mayhem can clearly afield, there is the Caesarboom, a vast Belgian area, ‘Tree Tales of South Northamptonshire’, huge, once-coppiced crown gave shade when the Why? Too often the reasons given are pavement be seen when Theseus and Hippolyta go out yew tree where Julius Caesar is said to have that offers a grid reference and a little illustrated cows were milked outdoors in the summer. Salcey undulation and kerb misalignment. Four thousand for rebirth and fertility. For Fiona into the forest to perform the rites of May in A taken a brief rest from his conquest of Europe, history for some of the most locally significant Oak itself even once had a poem published in The have already been felled. To strip a road called Stafford it is the month of tree Midsummer Night’s Dream. or the striking outline of the Lone Pine, marking trees. Many people had an impressive depth Northampton Mercury in 1825: ‘Rustlings’ of its trees is to strip it of its history The sheer surprise of ‘May’ blossom sheds light the devastation at Gallipoli, or the triumphant of knowledge about one or two trees but the and its culture. TREE-TRUTH stories and blossom. on the veneration inspired by the old Glastonbury Freetown Cotton Tree, where the first freed slaves beauty of the map was the way it brought all that Whether of high or low condition The benefits to health and well-being 72% of UK woods are in private ownership. Good, sensitive management Thorn, which flowers every Christmas and again held services of thanksgiving in Sierra Leone. knowledge together into one place for common I supplicatingly petition associated with living among mature trees have of our woods is essential to ensure THE MAGNA CARTA That you would please to spare my age healthy habitats for trees & CHARTER OF THE FOREST in the spring. According to the legend, Joseph Some trees retain their celebrity status not use. The map is a very intriguing record of this been well established now. The ‘Treeconomics’ and wildlife. English Barons force King John to HAWTHORN TIME of Arimathea left Jerusalem after the crucifixion as witnesses to something, but as seedlings of collected knowledge. From the devouring axe’s rage, movement has generated a powerful argument sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede and travelled all the way to Britain, ending up someone. All over the Scottish Borders are mature In Maidford, for example, between Which you’ve commissioned, so hear we, for the quantifiable value of trees that cannot be in 1215, a fundamental Charter of Liberties. This quite [possibly I must confess to a personal soft spot for all those in the West Country. As he stuck his staff down trees planted by Walter Scott, who was almost Northampton and Banbury, each of the trees To cut down every forest tree. ignored. But while financial value is ‘something happened beneath the Ankerwycke Yew. hawthorns that have finally succeeded in bursting as active with a spade as with a pen. These local around the church was planted in memory of a that everyone can understand’, trees are not only In 1217 John's heir, Henry III, signs a Charter of the Forest at Runnymede. free from years of hedgedom and are now re- features often testify to a less familiar side of young man from the village who died in the First amenities. They are a part of the wider community Clauses of the Magna Carta relating asserting their identities as trees. You can almost a legendary figure, like the oak tree in County World War, a poignant expression of memory and of wildlife we share the land with. They have to the forests are expanded and made ‘Almost overnight, the May ‘Knowing some of the into their own Charter, setting out feel the sense of release as the branches fly in all Clare, apparently planted by the High King and grief. The village of Aynho to the south is known other forms of value that cannot be as easily freedoms and liberties of all those directions. Neglected hedges running parallel along tree proclaims the arrival of warrior chief of Ireland, Brian Boru. Planting is as ‘the apricot village’ because apparently in the meanings and values of quantified. Our cultural history is intertwined living in forest areas. It re-establishes rights of access to the Royal a disused track will stretch out and touch boughs, spring, wrapping itself often a foundational act, and a public pledge of early sixteenth century the Lord of the Manor the trees around you with the trees around us and this should bolster Forests for free men. vaulting into arches. Once they are feathered with future prosperity. Even trees that have long since gave his tenants apricot trees to plant in the warm the fight to protect them. They change and grow spring leaves, the entire track is transformed into in snow as if to mock disappeared can still survive in memory. The Logan soil next to their chimney breasts, requesting that is more important under the same shifting climate as we do. They a tunnel of green light, a secret world, protected Elm in Ohio where Chief Logan made his stirring they pay part of their tithes in apricots rather than enter our art, literature and film. They are our and quiet, where a young deer might stop and winter into retreat. ’ lament for his massacred tribe is now marked by a money. A good number of local gardens still have now than ever.’ strange neighbours and there is a deep value in this stare before disappearing through a wall that is no commemorative stone since the old tree succumbed apricot trees in them today. that goes beyond arguing for them as amenities, ROYAL OAK 1651 longer impenetrable. The old hawthorns are still to Dutch Elm Disease, before collapsing in a storm Other slightly more grim associations record (In its next issue, The Mercury published a however efficacious it may be to do so. King Charles II hides in an oak bent and disfigured from their years of submission, on Weary-All Hill at Glastonbury, it burst into in the 1960s. The Hart Horn Tree near Penrith, the Middleton Cheney Oak which is known for poem in reply in the voice of the King granting the A map of ‘Tree Tales’ for your local area at Boscobel Wood to escape the Parliamentarian army. Many pubs but their spreading bundles of trunks bear young, a thorn tree. For centuries, the sacred thorn with two skulls and a set of antlers nailed to the the body of a man and a boy found buried at its tree a reprieve out of ‘respect for your lengthen’d can help to collect and share some of the richly get called The Royal Oak. By this slim branches, undistorted by human management. continued to flower in the nativity season and trunk, kept alive for centuries the memory of stag foot in the early nineteenth century (thought to years’). strange values associated with the trees you know time half of England is enclosed and many commoners' rights fall Light falls through these wilder forms onto patches again in Holy Week, like a reliable miracle tuned chased across the Border into Scotland and back be the victims of the notorious Culworth Gang); Of course, it’s not only such notable trees and care about. Mapping these values is a way BLACK DEATH 1348 into neglect, including for coppice. of fresh grass, or a rusting harrow abandoned to the patterns of the Abbey Church. During the again by a single hound, until they both died of and a row of willows around the old brick pits that matter, but it does make you wonder what of articulating their meaning and offers a strong Landlords assume possession and by Pressure to clear woodland to expand the 19th century will be auctioning farmland is reduced as the Black years ago. Where the forgotten path meets the well- Civil War, a soldier loyal to the new, puritanical exhaustion in Whinfell Forest. Wordsworth was at Silverstone that are said to be haunted by a memories, histories and associations others in argument for their conservation. But more than coppice lots to the highest bidders. Death cuts the population by half, within a year or so. Woodland ecologist trained hedge-lined road, there might be a trail of ideals of Cromwell and shocked by anything unimpressed by those responsible: ‘High was the carriage and horses that sank into the surrounding your village or borough might have about the this, it can also be a fun way to better get to and historian Oliver Rackham has honeysuckle or an empty yogurt pot, a clump of that smacked of superstitious idolatry, took an trophy hung with pitiless pride’, he declaimed; but mire many years ago. trees nearby. As Richard Mabey reminds us, know your place and the people who live there said 'Any wood then remaining had a good chance of surviving the next 500 cow parsley or a polystyrene chip tray. axe to the Glastonbury Thorn. As the stump still he was still moved by the way in which an old tree ‘what you take for granted might be a revelation in a whole new way. Seeing the trees you know years'. Some woods This is a tree with striking natural habits, furnished a few twigs, a cutting was quietly taken could sustain local memories for so long. to your neighbour.’ The Tree Tales map shows so well through the eyes of your neighbours can get bigger, and some new ones appear by natural colonisation most of all the sudden profusion of white spring and replanted, so in due course the hawthorn Old, hollow trees are especially prone to being how we might all have small pieces of the puzzle bring them alive in new ways, so why not make a on abandoned land. blossom. Every year, huge heaps of flour seem to grew again, apparently demonstrating a capacity filled with tales of the bold characters who have and that putting them together can produce map of your own Tree Tales? Who knows where be dropped along the branches by a supremely for eternal life. Every Christmas, a sprig of the hidden themselves inside and, as the years pass, something rich and memorable that the people of it will lead? ‘Parish Maps’ is a project Common careless cook. Almost overnight, the May tree flowering thorn is still sent to the Queen – until the hollowed becomes hallowed. Or haunted. an area can treasure as a record of their heritage. Ground started in the 1980s and proclaims the arrival of spring, wrapping itself in 2010, that is, when the ancient thorn was Headless horsemen and phantom hunts tend to And who knows what other ideas making the continues to inspire communities Make your map throughout to create their own snow as if to mock winter into retreat. decapitated again, this time with a chainsaw. gallop through the darkest forests, along with the map might prompt: tree walks, tree tours, tree maps of their local environment. Part of the hawthorn’s mysterious power lies in Since then, new thorns, nurtured from the original ghosts of ravished maidens, murdered brides and dressings, booklets, annual picnics, new artworks, Community map projects are a great way for Initially, Common Ground selected its unpredictability. In the unkind spring of 2013, tree have been planted again and subsequently lost children. The great forests of Germany, dense perhaps even the planting of new trees themselves, people to explore and get to know the local area. eighteen artists, including Norman Ackroyd, Conrad Atkinson, Adrian Fiona Stafford is Professor of English after what seemed like an interminable winter, it vandalised. The battle over the Glastonbury Thorn with ancient oak and evergreens, sprouted fairy carefully matched to soil and surroundings? It also gives people an opportunity to talk about Berg and Anthony Gormley, to Language and Literature at the create maps of their home parishes University of Oxford. She recently was early June before the hawthorn deigned to is becoming a regular news item, which may in stories as readily as fir cones and spruce needles, Knowing some of the meanings and values of the trees in their area: what can be done to protect for an exhibition, Knowing Your broadcast The Meaning of Trees on brighten the fields of rural Buckinghamshire. The turn be generating its own succession of episodes. inspiring the Grimm brothers to gather them up the trees around you is more important now than special trees and how to improve the life of trees Place, that toured to twelve different BBC Radio 3, on which her new book locations nationally. Inspired by The Long, Long Life of Trees (Yale natural calendar is entirely weather dependent, The old abbey is a Christian site, and the ancient for frightening children far and wide. But spectral ever. A concerning trend has recently begun to in the streets, orchard, woods or parks nearby? the exhibition, people across the University Press) is based. so May blossom might come hurrying out in see city councils outsource highway maintenance Visit for books, pamphlets thorn’s habit of coming into bloom to celebrate stories can thrive in lighter conditions, too. The commonground.org.uk country began to form groups and Penzance by April, or fail to arrive in Aberdeen Christ’s birth and resurrection fits perfectly with mixed hazel, bird cherry and ash in Wayland to private companies that are less accountable and further map-making inspiration. You can also create their own parish maps. Both until midsummer morning. Whenever it the ecclesiastical year. Its miraculous character is Woods in Norfolk allow enough light for a sea of to civic democracy. In Sheffield, the city council visit treecharter.uk/you-and-your-community the ‘Copthorne Village Map’ and the ‘Village of Bobbing’ maps were appears, the blossom is all the more arresting explained by the particular variety of hawthorn – spring bluebells and yet still harbour memories of has signed a twenty-five-year contract with for mapping ideas and free tools in the ‘Charter created in response to the Parish for its unpredictability. That the fickleness of the crataegus monogyna biflora, which has a winter the Babes in the Wood and their melancholy fate. Amey PLC, a large infrastructure provider, and Champion Handbook’. Map project. 6 | spring 2016 spring 2016 | 7 LEAF! | TREE STORIES Birdsong is the voice of spring, heralding the lengthening days and ARTIST BEA FORSHALL Martin Maudsley reimagines a traditional tree tale. rebirth in the hedges and trees. It is DISCOVERS WHAT A also, as John Fanshawe describes, an LONG-TAILED TIT USES WILLOW WIFE TO BUILD ITS NEST Once there was a tree: a willow tree - supple and strong, green and graceful. expression of the need to nest. The willow grew beside a wooden bridge over a small stream, with its roots sipping the cool water below. For generations the people of the nearby village had grown to appreciate and cherish the tall willow tree. In summer, it was a shady resting place to meet and talk with friends. In winter, it stood NESTCRAFT stone-cold and still, decorated with a filigree of frost, until its delicate, dancing catkins opened to herald the beginning of spring. March and the sense of winter is nearly banished. A young farmer lived in the village and he, more than anyone else, loved The sad, short-day song of the robin gives way the willow tree. To him, it was as a dear and trusted friend. The tree was the first thing he saw from his window each morning, and on returning home to richer notes. Woodland birdsong is underway: from the fields he eagerly searched the horizon for its familiar leafy shape. ORNAMENTAL PLANTING 1700s song thrush, chaffinch, building as other birds join Every year, at the end of April, on the feast day of Saint George, he left a Landowners start to make new ornamental parks and plantations, to the chorus that climaxes so wonderfully in May posy of flowers from his garden and placed them on the roots of the old enclose and re-organise the countryside, and June. A sense of urgency gathers as territories willow; a custom handed down from his father, and his father before that. but many ancient woods managed are sung back into shape. A future nest is at stake. Time passed in the village, following the rhythm of the seasons, each through woodsmanship also survive. year marked by the falling, yellowing leaves of the willow in autumn. Until Driven by lengthening, warming days, an one year, one day, servants arrived with news that the lord of the manor instinctual need to breed sets birds to finding nest wanted timber to build a great feasting hall. The willow was one of the trees sites and starting work. For some, nesting is a earmarked to be felled, but when the young farmer heard of the plans he thoroughly public affair: cawing, squabbling rooks rushed to the tree in fear and fury. He begged, pleaded and bargained with collect new sticks, rob their neighbours, and make the servants - offering them many, other sturdy trees from his own land if only they would spare this willow. Eventually they agreed, the willow tree it clear to all and sundry that any rookery is full of was spared, and so continued to grow by the bridge over the stream. life again. Each one is a rowdy, raucous parliament Willow weave: Laura’s sculpture at RSPB South Essex Marshes. Not long later, on a soft spring evening, the young farmer was sitting for sure, an avian House of Commons. underneath his beloved willow, staring dreamily into the slow-flowing stream. In woodland, hollow cavities protect some, like building the den or just ‘being’ in the den is the Suddenly he caught sight of the reflection of a young woman standing by the the tits and woodpeckers, but for most, the craft Den-building was an essential more enjoyable, it’s creatively wild. To crawl or side of the tree, with willowy body and bright, moonlit face. He jumped to his feet, turned around, stammering a greeting. The woman smiled sweetly in ENCLOSURE ACTS 1773 - 1882 of nesting is more secretive – the site and technique experience of childhood, explains climb into a self-made den, with its crude but reply, and for a moment the two of them stood staring at each other, as if held A legal process in English Parliament of constructing a nest is a critical element in joyous details, surrounds a child in a sense of place in a spell, until she stepped behind the tree and disappeared. But the very next begins enclosing small landholdings protecting eggs and hatchlings from the weather, 3000 lichen flakes the artist Laura Ellen Bacon. and personal creativity unlike any other. and commons to create larger farms.. 600 silk spider cocoons night she was there again by the tree, and this time she lingered a little longer. Land - including woodland - becomes or avoiding predatory birds and mammals like 200-300 sprigs of moss Textures and scents are fixed in my memories And for the rest of that spring and summer, night after night, the young restricted to the owner and is no jays and squirrels. For me, the chaffinch is one 2000 feathers THE NESTING of dens. My deep well of remembered dens farmer and the young woman met beside the stream beneath the willow's longer available for communal use. In branches - often the farmer spoke in eloquent praise of the elegant tree, and in England and Wales this process ended of the great nest-finders. The ornitholgists Bruce The moss and silk work contains spaces under laurel, so fragrant in the an ancient system of agriculture, like Velcro. The moss (the INSTINCT return the woman's heart slowly turned tender towards him. By autumn the becoming a widespread feature of the Campbell and James Ferguson-Lees note that hooks) attaches to the tree spring; a rudimentary ‘thatch’ roof made from young couple were happily married with the willow tree always at the centre English landscape. though the birds ‘may often be watched building’ with the silk strands (the Having access to woodlands from a young age weeds that seemed so pungent when I excitedly of their lives. there is a risk of site desertion and new nests are hoops) - it can be fastened made me an artist. The scent of the woodland hid from the rain; a rising veil of scent in the A few years later, however, messengers once more arrived in the village. and unfastened to keep the ‘sometimes dismantled and rebuilt elsewhere’. For floor and the tangling nature of twigs revealed a treetops from a carpet of bluebells below and the Now the King himself had sent scouts scurrying far and wide in search of nest tightly attached as it timber: he planned to build more ships, to expand his navy. This time the solitary nesters, this blend of instinct and concern expands. The nest walls are creative sense that is still potent for me today. smell of the ground which I was so close to. It elastic and can expand young farmer's impassioned pleas had no effect - the willow's timber, strong is the key driver, and nest craft is a complex mix for the chicks to grow. My parents set up a small fruit farm in the late made me attuned to the spirit of the place and the and sturdy, was too valuable to be ignored. Two soldiers had to physically of siting, building, and then surviving an evolved 1970s and I spent my youngest years nestling into changing layers in the natural world: crackling restrain the desperate farmer as woodcutters raised their glinting axes. It war of attrition with watchers, be they benign or woody nooks and branchy havens wherever I coverings of beech-nut cases were textures that I took them all day to chop through the thick trunk of that great, old tree. But malign in nature. could find them. I relished hiding from the rain in enjoyed sweeping away with little brooms made of eventually, as the sky reddened into evening, the tree was ready to fall, and Like many others, female chaffinches craft a places where low boughs overhung dry stone walls sticks; lacy, drooping rowan blossom was a pretty with a terrible groan it crashed to the ground, its green leaves spilt like tears. In that moment a piercing pain entered the young farmer's heart. He broke bowl. Feathered potters shaping a vessel for their and dragging fallen branches into place, kneeling rooftop before the berries came; the sharp little free from the soldiers and rushed home as fast as he could; his footsteps eggs, interweaving moss, grass and plant fibres, in the leaf litter and mosses to fasten them. I was beech buds revealed such ruffled, lime-coloured fuelled by fear. By the time he returned the farmhouse was in darkness and often disguising the exterior with lichens stuck making spaces of my own. young leaves. I often had a stick or log as a shelf their bedroom was empty - a warm imprint still on the bed, a soft sigh in the PLANTATION FORESTRY 1800s together with spiders’ web. Early nests are often Weekends on our fruit farm saw my parents to display the colourful leaves I’d found, although air. His willow wife was gone. Plantation forestry starts in earnest, based on the German model with a built close to tree trunks, but, as leaves unfold barrowing horse manure and salvaging land time quickly brought both disappointment and commitment to conifers and inspired by 'Empire Forestry' in British India. around the birds, twig forks are often preferred. from an area that had previously been a plant intrigue to this store of curling, faded treasures. Afforestation of open land such as During building, the male often accompanies his nursery in the 1800s. The ghostly outlines of Within the experiments of binding, bundling moors and heaths starts. mate, or sings, chinks and wheezes nearby. outgrown hedges and bushes remain entangled in and piling my various sticks and grasses lay an LEAF! : As a small boy, I remember finding an old my memory, as do the heady memories of finding immeasurable store of fingertip knowledge and chaffinch nest blown down by an autumn storm. birds’ nests spaces and making dens in the rabble of branches. rising ambitions. To curl up on a ‘bed’ of moss or STORY-TELLINGWORKSHOP It fitted my cupped hands perfectly, and it seemed by Edward Thomas While I was small, I was allowed free reign within to peek through a stick-framed window while the simply magical that this structure, with its lining the boundaries of the farm; slightly older, at the rain was discouraged by a deep layer of weeds and of hair, wool and feathers, had been the focus age of twelve, I was given my first hammer which I branches were the greatest of things. TALKING for a month of incubation, feeding and fledging a The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind, used for building dens in the trees. Given access and safety, it’s easy enough to TREES brood, a hidden place of wonder. Some torn, others dislodged, all dark, As an adult and sculptor, I remain incredibly tie sticks together or layer leafy branches. It can In spring woodlands, as nesting goes on all grateful to my parents for giving me that freedom occupy an afternoon, or enthusiastic building can “Stick Stories“ around, a multitude of cups, platforms and domes Everyone sees them: low or high in tree, and my memories and love of woodlands are endure season after season. are being crafted to specific purpose, host families, Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark. still an enormous sensory wealth in my creative As a sculptor there are always new inspirations Martin Maudsley gives us the growing next year’s dawn chorus, invariably out stores. Much of my early sculptural work referred and new pathways, but the almost fragrant first in a series of his INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 1760 of sight, but not of mind - from the high stick to this deep satisfaction of building dens and I’ve potency of my early woodland explorations tree-story workshops In the Industrial Revolution, wood Since there’s no need of eyes to see them with starts to be replaced by metal, platform of the sparrowhawk, to the chiffchaff returned to it many times. My works such as continues to infuse my most creative times. brick and steel as Britain's main I cannot help a little shame building material, and by coal as its at ankle level in a bramble patch, a dome-oven ‘Woven Space’, ‘Into the Weave’ and ‘In the Thick principal fuel. Copses of hazel and of grass and dead leaves. I recall the birder- That I missed most, even at eye’s level, till of It’ openly reveal this. Making dens educated all sweet chestnut start to be neglected. poet Edward Thomas and his discovery of nests of my senses and the precious, precise memories START BY FINDING A STICK. . . Workers leave the land for the cities. The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game. Native woods and forests begin ‘uncovered by autumn wind’. remain a permanent fuel for ideas. Not just any old stick but a stick that you like and that likes you. to recede from British life, There were two types of dens I built when I It's a good way to explore the immediate environment - in parks, woods or gardens - if not from the memory. Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests and also to tune into playful instincts and intuitions. Like us, every stick is unique. ’ was young: those in trees and those on the ground. And it's always interesting to discover what sticks are chosen, and why. Still in their places, now first known, It would be so hard to declare a favourite, as We can use these sticks to help make and tell stories, At home and by far roads. Boys knew them not, some were fleeting and some lasted for many and storytelling is somehow easier with a stick in your hand. years; some were made in a single day and some Each individual stick's characteristics of shape, size and texture offer possibilities John Fanshawe is an author and Whatever jays and squirrels may have done. were projects that brewed and developed across to play with our imaginations. One by one going round the group, or else talking in environmentalist working on bird the seasons in the back of my exercise books at partners, come up with ingenious ideas for what the stick could be (apart from a and biodiversity conservation, stick, that is). Perhaps start with the phrase “This is not a stick, it's a. . .“ primarily for the charity BirdLife. And most I like the winter nests deep-hid school. All were incomparably special and fuelled by an acute creative blaze that is almost unlike any . . . staff for a wizard. . . Laura Ellen Bacon is an artist who lives and . . . magical sword, lost long ago . . . Bea Forshall studied Illustration That leaves and berries fell into: other form of enthusiasm I know. at Falmouth College of Art and works in Derbyshire. Her sculptures are . . . piece of a bridge where a troll lives . . . creates beautiful artworks about Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts, Making a den of any size, robust or delicate, most often created on site, in both landscape Sometimes the descriptions naturally lead onto full-scale improvised animals and conservation. And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew. offers such a potent mixture of stimulating and cityscape settings that have included, stories based around that initial idea. Other times it's fun to just experiences. It brings both an inward calm and Chatsworth, Somerset House, London, and New keep it short and snappy - like a stick!

© The Estate of Edward Thomas glowing enthusiasm. It’s hard to say whether Art Centre at Roche Court. 8 | spring 2016 Published in the The Collected Poems by Faber & Faber spring 2016 | 9 | WOODWORK TREEHOUSES | LEAF! LEAF! A couple of years ago, I embarked upon a Artist Matthew Richardson project – to fell a single ash tree and see how remembers how he learned to love Angela King was the first Wildlife many different things could be made out of it. I Campaigner for England for Friends had several motives: to honour a tree species that making things with wood. of the Earth, and initiated and ran Robert Penn presented the television has been fundamental to the progress of man for the Otter Project. She went on to series Tales from the Wild Wood be consultant to Earth Resources and recently published The Man millennia; to revive interest in using ash timber; Research and Nature Conservancy Who Made Things Out of Trees. He and to reflect on our relationship with trees and MY TREEHOUSE Council until she co-founded is also a Champion of the Charter Common Ground with Sue Clifford for Trees, Wood and People. wood more generally. I was also, however, initially I have lived in inner city London and remote and Roger Deakin in 1983. inspired by the idea of getting things made out rural Wales – different places with different of ash for my three children – bowls, spoons, relationships to wood and woods. cricket stumps, bookmarks, a canoe paddle and I grew up in Walthamstow, not far from Epping a toboggan were first on the list. I am a great Forest, where we’d throw sticks into trees to try believer that how we value things made out of and get conkers down. I always liked making natural materials is a reflection of how we value things. When I was seven or eight I was given TREE-TRUTH nature itself. I wanted to convey this idea to my my first tool box by my granddad and so began Trees help communities stay children through practical, everyday objects, a life of sawing, sanding, planing, cutting and physically and mentally healthy, and help aid recovery from rather than just tell them. banging to make things. I remember going with illness or stress. In the end, I managed to get 44 different uses my dad to the woodyard, coming back with 2x1s, COMMONS PRESERVATION 1850 The Lord of the Manor of Loughton out of my one ash tree – from a set of dominos chipboard sheets, things needed for our ‘home encloses 1,000 acres of Epping Forest, and charcoal to a writer’s desk, a shop counter, improvements’. I helped and I got the off-cuts. leaving just nine acres for recreation of the villagers. Thomas Willingale, felloes for cartwheels and arrow shafts. At first, Much later in Wales, where I chopped and a labourer, leads a revolt and lops my three children showed an interest: Scarlett, burnt firewood to keep warm, I learnt green hornbeam pollards for firewood in the traditional manner. The Willingale aged eleven, loved eating her cereal from one woodworking and how to work with the natural family are sentenced to hard labour of the bowls; Lucas, fourteen, was enamoured qualities of wood – cleaving, whittling and but the Commons Preservation Society takes up their cause and by 1851 the by the bodkin-tipped arrow; while Katrina, ten, carving. I’ve never liked labels, but when pressed, I Lords of the Forest are ordered by was adamant that I use the ash pegs when we call myself a ‘Bricoleur’. This is someone that puts Courts to remove fences. They refuse and in 1879 5,000 people turn up put my old canvas tent up in the garden on a things together from bits and pieces with whatever to protest by exercising their rights. sweltering weekend at the end of summer. They all is to hand. Whether I am using collaged images, Two years later Queen Victoria is Angela King explains how we can compelled to declare enthusiastically invited any visitors to the house off-cuts of wood, or twigs from trees, I get the the forest open to the public Spoon, peg, catapult, paddle: the objects that Rob Penn discovered could be made from a single ash tree. to admire the grain in the new kitchen worktop, same delight of re-making and creating something celebrate the birds in our garden, 'without let or hindrance'. but then their interest waned. Ash panelling ‘new’ from what is to hand, what is available. school or workplace by building THE KINDER SCOUT A childhood memory inspired things I then loved. I don’t think I even knew went up on the walls of my office: it was barely As a child, I had the ambition of building a MASS TRESPASS 1932 nesting-places that express the birds’ A mass trespass is undertaken at Charter Champion Rob Penn’s that my prized Dunlop Maxply tennis racket, my acknowledged. Benches were fitted in our back treehouse in our back garden. The problem was Kinder Scout, in the Peak District of hockey stick, my cricket stumps and bails, the room: ‘More ash,’ they groaned. I even heard we didn’t have any trees, just grass, a swing, personalities or your locality. Derbyshire, on 24 April. This act of wilful trespass by ramblers highlights journey to discover what can be rocking chair in my brother’s bedroom and the Katrina whisper to a neighbour who’d come to and a few old rose bushes. I managed, though, the fact that walkers in England and family toboggan were all made out of ash wood. blag some firewood: ‘Don’t take the ash logs. to construct a platform on the top of the fence, Wales were denied access to made from a single ash tree. areas of open country. Yet that tree somehow stuck with me. The ash is my Dad’s a bit weird about them.’ hidden within a forsythia bush. And the sequence BUILD FOR BIRDS! Imagination has inspired wonderful nesting boxes. favourite tree species. Ever since childhood, I have Their waning interest hardly mattered, though. of images below is inspired by the memory of the WOODWORK instinctively looked for ash trees in the woodlands My work was done. My kids are growing up treehouse. I combined real bits of wood, sawn Bird houses tend to mimic, as near as possible, attention to the lack of nature in areas of the city. and fields, and even in the urban landscapes where steeped in quotidian artefacts made from ash. and nailed together, with leaves scanned from conditions in the wild. The specific requirements In Komoro City, Japan, sparrows can choose from I grew up under an ash tree. It stood over the gate I have lived. Four decades later, standing under an Even if they hardly acknowledge them now, they an eigtheenth-century Thomas Bewick wood for each species can vary a great deal. Some birds seventy-eight openings, while humans can clamber that led from my childhood garden to the fields ash tree still sparks happy memories. understand what a fantastic material wood is. engraving of a tree. This bricolage of wooden are opportunistic when it comes to finding nesting into the back of the bird house itself, to watch FORESTRY COMMISSION 1919 where my brother and I played out our fantasies. I now live in the Black Mountains, South Wales, elements and digital images gives new life to old sites. Robins are well-known for using old tins, the nesting family without interrupting them. Britain has less than 5% tree To dash past the elegant, slim-hipped, sweeping on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. things. What do you think will happen to these boots and even kettles. Blackbirds have made use In the UK, the first starling roost was made by coverage when the Forestry Commission is set up by the government. It form of that ash in winter and to flash beneath its It is a landscape similar to that which I knew as words you’re reading on printed paper? Where of old tractors, and a thrush in Wigan even made Charles Waterton in Yorkshire in 1813: ‘Behind begins systematic mass planting of airy canopy in summer was to be transformed into a child, and a part of Britain heavily accented will this newspaper end up? Will it be used to light use of a pelican crossing sign! the water gate he built a starling tower, setting moorlands, heathlands and conversion of ancient woodlands to plantations a colonel or a king, a knight or a wizard. That ash with ash. Common or European ash (Fraxinus a fire, or found and shredded by a bird and used With bird houses we can be as inventive as the it on a tall stone pedestal to make it inaccessible of Sitka spruce and other fast- was, for many years, the gatekeeper to my dreams. excelsior) is the third most prevalent broad-leaved to line its nest? birds, taking their needs into consideration at the to Hanoverian rats. It had about sixty nesting growing, non-native conifers. The forestry policy is based on I can’t remember as a child ever making the tree in Britain, after oak and birch: today, it is same time. Bird houses are for the birds and their chambers, each one set behind a loose stone which cost-benefit theory but many connection between that tree and many of the under serious threat from disease. needs must always come first, but we could and could be removed. He also built a sand martin ancient woodland conversions are, in the end, unprofitable. should celebrate birds by building them roosts wall for nesting, and attracted over a hundred to POST-WAR 'DEVELOPMENT' Woodsmanship starts and boxes which are inspired by local legends, return to Wakefield, which they had forsaken in to die out. Driven by conversion to forestry, folklore, local architectural styles, or even your the early days of the Industrial Revolution.’ expansion of farmland, new roads and urban development, the Forestry hopes for the future. In city centres where starlings and pigeons are Commission actively encourages A host of wonderful and eccentric dovecotes banished from window ledges and trees, like grubbing up of ancient woodlands and replanting with fast-growing TREE-TRUTH have been made and successfully used for Waterton, we can design purpose-built stylish non-native conifers. Stumps of coppice are sprayed with herbicides. This Wood and CO2 are natural partners. centuries. In the USA, gourds are hung from trees artificial roosting places for them. In fact, all new Trees absorb CO as they grow so the destruction peaks in the 2 to attract purple martins – the gourds are even buildings could incorporate bird houses as a matter 1950s and 1960s.. more forests we plant the more CO2 we can absorb - one tonne of carbon moulded in to shape while they are growing. In of course. Swift boxes, in particular, are easier to is stored for every m3 of timber. Copenhagen the artist Dambo built a series of put in while a building is being constructed as it Wood from sustainably managed forests can actually be better urban birdhouses with recycled materials to bring involves making a hole under the eaves with a box than carbon neutral. protruding into the loft. Alternatively, a box can be hung underneath the eaves. Let’s all build for birds! At home, school or in the workplace, why not organise a build-for- birds working party and discover the pleasure Tim Hunkin is an engineer, cartoonist, writer and artist living of observing and conserving the birds that are in Suffolk. He has made flying attracted to nest in your imaginative designs. sheep and pigs for Pink Floyd, presented a television series called The Secret Life of Machines, and his Birds' needs first ‘Rudiments of Wisdom’ cartoons The British Trust for Ornithology website (bto.org) were featured regularly in The Observer and are now has excellent information about the nesting needs THE WOODLAND TRUST 1972 published by Prion Books. of different species and details of the National Spiralling threats to our precious woods and trees leads to the founding of Nest Box Week, between 14-21 February, which is the Woodland Trust, which remains at Matthew Richardson is an artist and an established part of the ornithological calendar. the forefront of the fight to protect, avid collector of curios, postcards and plant and restore UK woodland. The Woodland Trust now own and manage knick-knacks, and can often be found more than 1,000 wildlife-rich native rummaging in charity shops and car woods across the UK, including many ancient woodlands and Sites of Special boot sales for images and objects that Scientific Interest. populate his illustrations. He also teaches at art colleges across the UK and has won several prizes for his work, including V&A Illustration Awards.

10 | spring 2016 spring 2016 | 11 | TREEHOUSES TREEHOUSES | LEAF! LEAF! The experience of building his own house changed forever the way Piers Taylor practised and thought about architecture. STUDIO IN THE WOODS

I grew up listening to music by people that were ASH DIEBACK 2012 told they couldn’t play or sing. For me, this made Chalara dieback in ash trees is first their music better, particularly as it depended noticed in Britain. Ash Disease is caused by the microscopic fungus DUTCH ELM DISEASE 1972 on delivery, and this delivery was freed from the Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, inhabits Dutch Elm Disease kills many elm tyranny of technique. leaves and twigs, damaging them by woods and eliminates most making a chemical called viridiol that hedgerow elms. Forty years later, the Mark E Smith called Rock ‘n’ Roll the is very toxic to ash. By July 2013 the geographical distribution of elms is ‘mistreating of instruments to explore feelings’. fungus had been found in 549 sites almost unaltered, but big elms are around Britain and Ireland. abundant only in Huntingdonshire, In architecture, even at its most loose and Cambridgeshire woodland, east Sussex and the Isles of Scilly. improvised, there has conventionally been little room for mistreating of tools to explore ideas – or buildings made by ‘amateurs’ without due regard for technique. This view suggests that my buildings are badly made! In the sense that I often have little regard for technique. But this doesn’t mean I don’t care about how they are made – on the contrary, I care enormously about how they are made, and the elemental relationships between OLIVER RACKHAM RIP components. Oliver Rackham, the leading historian Over the last decade I have become increasingly and ecologist of British woodlands, interested in how the process of design can be dies in February 2014, aged 75. COMMON GROUND 1983 He set new standards for research Common Ground is founded and re-imagined to benefit from the discoveries that linking ecology with history and its first major project is 'Trees, emerge from construction. There is an enduring archaeology. Considered a genius by Woods and the Green Man' - from his peers, he was able to combine 1986 to 1989 it explores the cultural idea in architecture: that photograph showing the original thinking with an encyclopedic relationship between trees and just-completed building, often empty and certainly knowledge, and was often outspoken on people, publishing various books and important issues such as tree initiating several art exhibitions, Building with beech forks: the woodchip store designed and built in 2016 by Zac Mollica and fellow students in Hooke Park, Dorset. Photo by Valerie Bennett. Wood pavilion at Lacey Green designed with the community and children of the local primary school. free from the process, without the chaos of people, disease, gloablisation, forestry including 'The Tree of Life' with the furniture, and free of the patina of occupation, and government policy. South Bank Centre, 'Out of the Wood' with the Crafts Council, and Andy Student Zachary Mollica tells us time studying philosophy and physics, I found The community of Lacey Green completion of the space as an interior classroom. weather or ageing that builds up. In my work, Goldsworthy's 'Leaves' show at the my way in to architecture school, seeing it as an The design of the double-pitched building I’m not terribly interested in the ‘final’ – I’m more Natural History Museum. and Clementine Blakemore build a what he’s been working on while opportunity to combine academic studies with emerged through observation of the local interested in the ‘ongoing’. living in a Dorset woodland. my experience of making things out of wood, and new space for learning and making vernacular, and the desire for an internal space This thinking stems from building my own a passion for design. music. that could be sub-divided. The structure was house, over ten years ago. It opened my eyes to My time in Hooke has been different. While prototyped and fabricated free of charge at a sense of what the process of construction and FOREST ideas of making and craft have seen a resurgence Grymsdyke Farm, using timber donated by the material exploration could offer. within architecture, the opportunity to study OUTDOOR Architectural Association at Hooke Park. As I built the house, a group of us started to do SCHOOL surrounded by the very materials that you’re Much of the support for the project came from something we called ‘Studio in the Woods’. We THE GREAT STORM 1987 working with is rare. After a few weeks at the CLASSROOM connections within the school community – with didn’t ‘set it up’ – Studio in the Woods evolved out A powerful storm ravages the UK in For the past sixteen months I’ve lived in Hooke Architectural Association’s London campus, my the acoustic engineering, groundworks, and many of friendships with other architects, and casual the middle of October. Winds gust Park, a 350-acre forest campus in Dorset run by classmates and I landed in Dorset. Settling in, a Project Lacey Green began in 2014 as my final other parts of the design and construction being conversations in the woods around my house. up to 100mph, 18 people lose their Charter lives, and of the 15 million trees the Architectural Association. Hooke Park has a pair of small projects in our first term allowed design project at the Royal College of Art. carried out by parents themselves. Trusting we’d be agile enough to catch things as for Trees, Woods said to have blown over in the night, thirty-year history of experimentation in wood us to familiarise ourselves with Hooke Park’s My studio was partially based at Grymsdyke With each piece of timber resting on the they happened, we just threw the cards up in the and People most are chainsawed and removed, even if they are still rooted and architecture. Today, this tradition continues workshop facilities and woodland terrain. Farm – a research and fabrication facility in adjacent one to create an interlocking lattice, air to see where they landed. alive. This reaction in the aftermath because students like me spend time here at Returning after the holidays, each year of the Buckinghamshire village of Lacey Green. the structural design reflects the ethos of Where they landed – or what came out of the CHARTER FOR TREES 2015 of the storm reveals our estranged In summer 2015 the Woodland Trust relationship with trees. Hooke Park researching, designing and building students is tasked with the realisation of a full Eager to work within the local community, and collaboration and interdependence within the first weekend of Studio in the Woods ten years invited organisations from across the with the trees that surround us. There are a mix building for the campus. This year, our brief keen to build upon my previous experience in project as a whole. The pavilion opened in ago – set the pattern for subsequent years. We’d conservation, environmental, business and social sectors to join a call for of broadleaf and conifer species here, as well was to construct a large span barn which could educational projects, I approached the village January 2016, and the design development of test ambitious ideas quickly, at 1:1, using timber a new Charter for Trees, Woods and as sawmilling and workshop facilities, which provide long-term storage for the wood chip primary school about a building that would be the second phase will be constructed over felled and milled on site. For me, the giddy and People. Over 50 responded and are supporting a shared ambition to put means the trees from Hooke Park can actually be needed to fuel a biomass boiler system installed based on an exchange: the school would benefit summer 2016. heady freedom that came with being able to work trees back at the heart of our lives, integrated within the design and building process. last year. from a new building, whilst I would benefit from During this phase, there will also be an directly, with materials to hand and with the chaos communities and decision making - where they belong. Growing up, my father and grandfather, a Looking around Hooke in January, we were the opportunity of seeing a project through to exchange of students between Grymsdyke Farm and surprise of inventing on the hoof was amazing. contractor and carpenter respectively, involved inspired by the complex range of geometric forms completion. in Lacey Green and the Architectural Association, It provided me with a new model of working. me in their work from an early age. After a short offered by natural tree forks – and the amazing Through discussions with the Head Teacher, a which will focus on the design and fabrication of It provided a freedom from a world where only structural performance that they display. We brief developed for a new music classroom that furniture for the new space. This incremental and ‘skilled’ people could make things. The material became fascinated by the use of forks and other would be built in two phases: the first seeing the collaborative process has shown me how a built relationships that are formed by alternatively unusual, curved pieces of timber in the traditional construction of the structural frame and roof structure can also become an ongoing social and skilled (conventionally unskilled) people are construction of wooden boat hulls. Though once to be used temporarily, the second seeing the cultural exchange. often more interesting to me than those that are Clementine Blakemore is the Director of Project Lacey Green. SELL THE FOREST! 2010 valued, these complex natural joints are now seen perfectly, and blindly, crafted. I’m a big fan of the The Conservative Government announces She completed her masters in proposals to sell the Public Forest as a nuisance – combustible at best. Combining ‘bodged joint’ where evidenced in it is the maker’s architecture at the Royal College of Estate, including ancient woodland, craft knowledge with innovative technologies back to the campus and scanned in 3d. An journey of discovery. Art in 2015, where her final design into private hands. A twenty-first thesis was awarded a Distinction, century revolt ensues: over half a and techniques, Design & Make projects have ‘organisation script’ was used to generate a Alongside this, the world of timber has become a Sustain RCA award, and was million people sign one online petition often sought to develop new ways of working final arrangement of forks in collaboration more and more fascinating to me over the years Highly Commended in the Helen alone, and in 2011 the Government with wood – material that we have long known. with engineers from Arup. This model was then since the first Studio in the Woods, and I’ve Hamlyn Design awards. abandons the plan. Aided by the Architectural Association’s recent translated into fabrication information with recently bought a 30 acre woodland with my installation of a six axis robotic arm (similar to which the robotic arm transformed each fork into partner, which we manage alongside practice and Piers Taylor has designed a number of seminal buildings, including the those found in automotive plants) and free of the a finished ‘component’ – fabricating connections family life. We’ve recently built our studio in it RIBA Award Winning ‘Room 13’. constraints of an inhabitable building, our team which establish each fork’s relationship to those with timber from the woodland, involving friends He has founded two architectural was able to push fabrication techniques to new around it. After being preassembled manually in and neighbours in the construction, and almost no practices, Mitchell Taylor Workshop and Invisible Studio, extremes. the Big Shed, the components of the Wood Chip drawings. The studio is an exercise in harnessing and is a former Design Fellow Surveying Hooke Park’s beech compartments, Barn’s primary truss were successfully lifted into the resourcefulness that many of my rural at the University of Cambridge a database of potential ‘components’ was place on site. neighbours have. Few had any formal construction and a Studio Master at London’s Architectural Association. established, and from it a structural concept was Sixteen months on, I find myself not wanting knowledge, and certainly none had ever built a developed. Based on the criteria of this structure, to leave. This project could not have happened building before. Free from the baggage of ‘correct’ 25 forks were harvested from the forest, brought anywhere else. ways of doing things, all brought an extraordinary 12 | spring 2016 spring 2016 | 13 | WOODENDS WILDWOOD | LEAF! LEAF! sensibility to the project. The building was an exercise in frugality that is typical of many traditional rural buildings – we simply used local Radiohead bassplayer, Colin materials and resources to shape the project. In Classics from Greenwood, shares his an era where most architecture is defined by its songs of the season ‘A prize-winning bough would be branched like a extravagance, the studio was an attempt to do the THE most with the least. Accordingly, with all materials stag’s antlers, abundantly leaved, symmetrical and, SOUNDS paid for, and everyone who worked on the project ideally, studded with oak apples, the curious rich WOOD paid – the studio cost £15,000. FROM We’re now just finishing delivering two buildings crown spherical galls grown by the tree in SHELF for Westonbirt, the National Arboretum that response to the larvae of the gall wasp.’ GREENWOOD will form their Tree Management Centre using a KING OF LIMBS similar method on a completely different scale. from ‘Oak Apple Day’ by Roger Deakin by Radiohead The buildings are the first that the arboretum have THE TREES built using their own timber – and use 20-metre- by Pulp long hand-hewn Corsican pine, as well as oak, spruce, larch and Douglas fir. Many volunteers have REVELATIONS by The Trees worked on the project alongside skilled carpenters, and the Carpenter’s Fellowship have used the Oak Apple Day, with its pagan Manor and Ranger of the Forest, whose ancestors up the fringes of the wood and entered a wood SHADOW OF THE SEASON buildings as vehicles for up-skilling their trainees. The buildings at Westonbirt, The National Arboretum, are built from timber grown and milled on site. undertones and roots in a had from time to time attempted to deprive the pasture of oaks with a browse line that was by The Screaming Trees Working in this manner and embracing villagers of their right to firewood. probably the result of centuries of Oak Apple seventeenth-century Act of FRUIT TREE contingency, chance and the glorious properties of I have no fixed work force, no formal company Woods isn’t a charity, a company or a co-op. It In the middle of the night I was woken by pruning as much as the browsing of cattle. Chris by Nick Drake green timber, design becomes a forum that allows – just a loose, unstructured collection of people is just people, who work together with no labels, Parliament, is very much alive and footfalls on the track below. Someone walked and I joined other villagers already busy claiming WEEPING WILLOW the unexpected to emerge. Jeremy Till describes this that work together when the conditions are right, titles or expectation. I’m never sure what is next, celebrated every May, as Roger right by me in the dark and disappeared into their oak boughs. Chris chose his carefully, by The Verve way of working as a ‘crucible for exchange between and do not when they aren’t. or what is around the corner, but my modus the wood. It was twenty to four and I was too explaining the finer points of the art to me. Later a mix of professionals, amateurs, dreamers and The simple motivation is the creative work. operandi is to carry out interesting work. If the Deakin rediscovered in his classic comfortable to stir. A poacher? Rustic insomniac? in the day, the boughs would be judged and prizes THORN IN MY PRIDE by The Black Crowes pragmatists’ with the architect an ‘open-minded With Studio in the Woods there was never any work is good enough, we find a way to make book Wildwood. At ten to four the first light began to glimmer, awarded by a committee of the Oak Apple Club, listener and fleet-footed interpreter, collaborating in commitment to ever work together again. There money and thrive creatively. and a few rooks left the wood through a dense founded in 1892 to stand up for the wood rights WILDWOOD the realization of other people’s unpolished visions’. is no hierarchy, no presumptions. Studio in the Nothing else matters. mist. The bats were still flying as the first skylarks and perpetuate the May celebrations. A prize- by Roger Deakin OAK APPLE rose above the fields below. I lay listening to the winning bough would be branched like a stag’s Published by Penguin cuckoo. Then, at five minutes to four the rough antlers, abundantly leaved, symmetrical and, Roger Deakin was a writer, film- Writer and naturalist Paul Evans At nightfall I walked a mile uphill through band struck up in the village below: a cacophony ideally, studded with oak apples, the curious rich maker and the co-founder of Common Ground. In WILDWOOD he sends his woodland despatch from cornfields out of Great Wishford towards the of everything noisy that would serve to wake crown spherical galls grown by the tree in response embarks on a quest that takes greater darkness of Grovely Wood stretched the citizenry. It was in a pretty sound that rose to the larvae of the gall wasp. him through Britain, across Europe, Wenlock Edge. along the sleeping ridge. It was a perfect starlit up the hill through the mist. Bass drum hunting to Central Asia and Australia, in Instances of such relics of tree worship as search of what lies behind man's night, nearly a new moon, and the chalky track, horn, saucepan lids, football rattles and the old this are well documented all over the world. In profound and enduring connection lined with cow-parsley, shone luminously in the church bell on a trolley were all trundled in ragged Cornwall people decked their doors on the first of with wood and with trees. This is FOREST the story of trees and woods as darkness. A dozen yards inside the wood, in the procession from house to house and vigorously May with boughs of sycamore or hawthorn, and in they exist in nature, in our souls, JOURNAL long grass of a bank above the track, I found the sounded until the lights came on. the county of Westmeath in Ireland a whole bush and in our culture and our lives. A perfect camping nest. It commanded a view of the was set before the door on May Eve and decorated I take the folded pruning saw from my bag and cart-way descending to the village, yet, once inside ‘I turned round to witness with spring flowers from the fields. The maypoles WILD open it. It has teeth like a terrier’s and cuts on the the bivouac bag, I was hidden by the steepness set up in villages to dance around would originally backbite. I set the blade low, where the upright of the bank. I roosted in that instinctive blend of a green figure, half-tree, have been live new trees brought in from the HARVEST joints form a fork and the old sawing motion weariness and vigilance familiar to the unofficial woods each year. In The Golden Bough, Sir James unlocks my arm’s instinct – in from the outfacing camper. Badgers soon began squabbling noisily half-stag, striding towards Frazer quotes the North Bavarians, who still bring Pignut & wild until just before it binds, down from the back until in the wood, joined now and again by the hoarse me down the track out of in a fresh fir tree from the forest every few years, garlic pesto the weight topples the branch. Twigs at the top bark of a fox. But when all fell still and I lay stripping its branches but carefully leaving a bunch rake out of the crown, swish through an arc as gazing at the stars, the dew was audible as it fell the wood fully enveloped in of green foliage at the top ‘as a memento that in 50gm wild garlic leaves the branch falls with a sigh onto winter leaves and softly on the oak leaves around me, and on my it we have to do, not with a dead pole, but with a (or immature seed pods) the first shoots of dog’s mercury. No bones about face, and I drifted towards sleep. antlers of leafy oak boughs.’ living tree from the greenwood’. Ceremonies such 30gm pignuts it, this cold is a holding back. Catkins, budburst, It was the eve of Oak Apple Day, and the as the Grovely rite were originally performed with (or hazelnuts) birdsong, sap-rise are stalled by a lazy wind, bitter annual reassertion of rights to collect wood in the the most serious possible intent; to promote the Sliced & briefly toasted in as a blade; a cold spell on the last day to cut before Royal Forest of Grovely by the villagers of Great Blackbirds and thrushes were by now in full general fertility of every living thing in the parish a little oil in a frying pan the green. I’ve had my eye on this singular hazel Wishford in accordance with a charter granted to voice in the woods, and by four o’clock I was up for the whole of the coming season. People really 30gm Parmesan cheese coppice for a decade: a small, solitary, hidden them in 1603. The charter affirms that their rights and gazing across the deep sea of mist that hung believed there was a sanctity in the living bough; Grated or finely chopped place. Walking past it with my blunt-headed dog to the wood have existed since time immemorial, across the valley of the Wylye. I turned round to that it contained the invisible god of growth. It on a lead (to curb his explosive manners from usually taken to mean since well before Domesday. witness a green figure, half-tree, half-stag, striding was a kind of sacrament that might bless the house THROUGH THE WOODS 80ml Olive oil fundamental relationships with the natural world. troubling the laying-up deer), my right hand grabs In all seriousness, it requires the whole village to towards me down the track out of the wood fully and all who went in and out, and, by being carried Forager and writer John Wright by H.E. Bates Salt and pepper scours the woods and hedgerows in I fancy that in modern man this is expressed not a hazel stem and swings my weight against it. I ‘go in a dance’ to Salisbury Cathedral six miles enveloped in antlers of leafy oak boughs. This in procession round the village farmyards and into These ingredients will be enough in a walk through a wood with a wicker basket, feel the strain from grip, up arm to shoulder, the away once a year in May and claim their rights and wodwo wished me a cheery, almost casual ‘Good the fields at the high point of spring, might impart Published by Little Toller to fill a small jam jar. search of a seasonal feast. but a walk down a supermarket aisle with a wood’s electric shock. By my reckoning, the tensile customs in the forest with The Shout of the words morning’ and passed on. I caught him up and its power of regeneration and growth to everything trolley. But for its true expression, the wood is the strength of the branch would have something ‘Grovely! Grovely! Grovely! and all Grovely!’. discovered he was bearing two choice boughs: one it encountered. The simplest method is to whizz the garlic leaves and place to go. of mine in it when I cut it for a stick. I did this The villagers’ right to take away as much ‘deade for his house and another, the ‘Marriage Bough’, nuts in a food processor ]for a THE FLAVOUR Seasonality is everything with wild food and swing every day on the same stem for a couple of snappinge woode boughs and stickes’ as can be to be hoisted up the outside of the church tower few seconds, then continue to whizz while slowly adding among the first to appear is wild garlic. In fact years as it grew straight and thickened until one carried or hauled in a hand cart was still exercised and hung out to bless the season’s marriages with most of the olive oil. Finally, OF SPRING it has a very long season, reaching until June in winter’s morning I found it gone, hacked off. Some by some of the older parishioners until recently. fertility. He explained, from somewhere inside the stir in the grated Parmesan. People protect what they value. It is the beauty shady locations. Although it is mainly the leaves bastard cut the stick I’d been shaping for years. It But what seems to be the most ancient rite, with leaves, that no bough thicker than a man’s arm I prefer to leave things a and biodiversity of the woodland that is dear to that are collected, the flowers provide a pungent was a lesson, I suppose, like a raven’s sly derision clear pagan undertones, is to cut green boughs of may be cut. little coarser and take the them. But human beings are animals with animal decoration to salads and soups, and the crisp, of entitlement from the sky above; like a wren’s oak on Oak Apple Day, carry them into the village By the time we reached the village the rough traditional path of finely chopping the leaves then instincts, and they have yet to shed that which immature seed-pods can be pickled or made into a warning against hubris from the briar. Since then and decorate the doorway of each house and the band was returning to the Town End Tree at the grinding everything in a large has well served them and their ancestors through pesto. The leaves are best picked fairly early in the I’ve watched another upright grow: it’s taken three church tower. The custom is to begin the rite early, far end from the church, now an oak but reputedly pestle and mortar. evolutionary history. One such is the foraging year when they taste fresh – by June even a walk years to become something I can see a true staff in hence my presence in the night wood. an ancient elm in earlier times. It marks the Whichever you decide, spoon instinct, and it represents one of our most through a wild garlic wood can be a rancid affair. and it’s taken the death of the blunt-headed dog for At this stage I knew little more about Grovely starting point for the Oak Apple Day procession the pesto mixture into a sterilised jar and pour There is no mystery to using wild garlic, it is me to decide to cut it. I stretch my arms to make Wood than what the map had told me. I knew it in the afternoon. Lights were going on in the sufficient oil on top to keep just garlic which comes in salad form. As a salad a span and saw where my longest finger reaches. lay high above the fork of the rivers Nadder and windows, sending beams out on the mist, and the pesto covered. Close the lid and store it in a refrigerator. vegetable it must be used sliced and used sparingly This hazel stick I carry for him. Wylye three miles from their confluence at Wilton wood pigeons still slept on the telegraph wires. STICK MAN Under its layer of oil it will and shared only by consenting adults – like before meeting the Avon at Salisbury, and that The church bells pealed, and people armed with Oak Apple Day by Julia Donaldson keep for several weeks. cultivated garlic the fragrance has a distressing there were 2,000 shadowy acres of it, draped east- billhooks and bowsaws began to appear under the Also known as Royal Oak Day or Shick-Shack Day, Published by Alison Green Books amount of staying power. But it can be used in west along the top of the chalk ridge. Its nearest bunting in West Street, heading for the woods. falls on 29 May. It became a formal part of the soups and stews, where the pungency is somewhat edge, where I was ensconced, is just under a mile I went with them, hiking back up the hill with calendar in the seventeenth century, when an Act diminished, or in a pesto where it is not. In my outside Wishford. I also knew that I was encamped Chris Lock, who writes educational books from of Parliament was passed associating the annual own wild garlic pesto I use toasted wild pignuts on a minuscule percentage of the property of the his home in the village. Higher up, we emerged celebration with the restoration of Charles II to the or hazel nuts instead of pinenuts. Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, Lord of the from the mist into the early sunshine lighting throne. 14 | spring 2016 spring 2016 | 15 Chfor Trees,ar Wteoodsr and People

AN ALMANAC THE ARRIVAL OF SPRING by David Hockney David Hockney's 49 for Trees, Woods pictures, each depicting a APRIL different day of spring in East Yorkshire. and People Until May 31st SALT MILLS, Saltaire

300 YEARS OF CAPABILITY BROWN 2016 Events throughout SPRING the year, including a reconstruction of Capability Brown's tree-moving machine. BLENHEIM PALACE, Woodstock, Oxfordshire

TREE CARE JACK-IN-THE-GREEN WHAT IS THE ARBOREALISTS CAMPAIGN EARTH DAY DAMSON DAY April 29th - May 2nd A group of artists who Until September 2016 April 22nd 16th April YOUR EVENT? ST exhibit together to promote Join a traditional May Highlights the need Support the Earth See the orchards in Day parade in HASTINGS, Share your local trees in contemporary art. Day movement and its blossom at LOW FARM celebration or find GEORGE'S The exhibition features new for better care for all East Sussex, kicking off trees, in order to ensure 'Trees for the Earth' in the Lyth Valley, with a dawn salute and out more about what's work by 36 painters. campaign which plans Cumbria, and try the weekend-long festival of happening near you. DAY their survival and to plant 7.8 billion ceilidhs and folk music. April 23rd - June 3rd increase the number variety of food and www.treecharter.uk/ April 23rd ST BARBE MUSEUM reaching maturity. trees worldwide. drink made from www.hastingsjack.co.uk events-calendar/ Lymington damson fruit. www.treecouncil.org.uk www.earthday.org

MARSDEN CUCKOO FESTIVAL 23rd April Welcome the return of FIND OUT MORE the cuckoo with art Charter workshops, craft fair, a for Trees, Woods village procession, maypole ABOUT EVENTS and Morris dancing in and People MARSDEN, West Yorkshire. treecharter.uk/events-calendar

DOWNTON 'OBBY 'OSS CHESTNUT SUNDAY ABBOTSBURY CUCKOO FAIR FESTIVAL 8th May HOLLOW GARLAND DAY 13th May 30th April 2nd May Join in with a Opens 9th May local celebration the The old May Garland Celebrate the arrival A unique and Talented artist KATIE tradition is alive and of Spring on DOWNTON MAY DAY delightfully bizarre magnificent chestnut trees PATERSON has gathered MAY 1st May May day festival in bloom at TEDDINGTON 10,000 tree species for a well in ABBOTSBURY, VILLAGE GREEN, parade through the GATE, Bushy Park, nr new public artwork, ROYAL Dorset, where the Wiltshire. Hampton Court Palace community still picturesque town. FORT GARDENS, Bristol. celebrate the abundance www.cuckoofair.co.uk PADSTOW, Cornwall. www.fbhp.org.uk of spring.

WHIT SUNDAY 15th May

BUSHCRAFT SHOW LONDON TREE WEEK WEIRD AND FOREST FOLK 28-30 May GARLAND DAY PARADE 28 May - 5 June WONDERFUL WOOD Ends on 15th May 29th May 14-15 May 2016 Jam-packed event filled Celebrate and explore Two art installations with bushcraft activities OAK The Garland King rides London's trees and An annual festival depict forest creatures and adventure at BEEHIVE APPLE DAY horseback, covered to the woodlands with a series celebrating the beauty that respond to JUNE waist in a floral Garland, of special events. Email of wood and making FARM, Woodland Lakes, 29th May visitors' movements, Rosliston, Derbyshire. leads a procession through [email protected]. wooden objects at DULWICH PICTURE CASTLETON, Derbyshire. uk to find or post your HAUGHLEY PARK, www.thebushcraftshow.co.uk local event. Wetherden, Suffolk. GALLERY, London.

LAST CHANCE! SHARE YOUR THE ARBOREALISTS, a group show of artists promoting trees at end TREE STORY! at ST BARBE MUSEUM, Lymington, ends on [email protected] June 3rd. treecharter.uk/share-your-story

THE GREEN WHAT IS ROYAL THE ARB SHOW WORLD POOH SCYTHE FAIR WEST'S WOOD FAIR HIGHLAND SHOW 3-4 June 2016 STICKS 12th June 18 & 19 June YOUR EVENT? 23-26 June CHAMPIONSHIPS Arboriculture workshops THORNEY LAKES in Explore the many Share your local SUMMER Scotland's annual and demonstrations 5th June Muchelney, Somerset, interesting ways in celebration or find countryside showcase at WESTONBIRT COGGES MANOR FARM, is home of the West which wood is used. out more about what's SOLSTICE in Edinburgh at the ARBORETUM EAST DEAN, Chichester happening near you. 20th June ROYAL HIGHLAND Church Ln, Witney, Country Scythe SHOWGROUND. Gloucestershire. Oxfordshire. Championship, www.westswoodfair.co.uk www.treecharter.uk/ www.greenfair.org.uk events-calendar/ www.royalhighlandshow.org

WOODFEST WALES 24-26 June 2016 Traditional woodcraft in CAERWYS, North Wales, with beautiful and functional art, sculptures, objects, buildings and more. www.woodfestwales.co.uk