Personal Blogs

I'm giving a talk at the AGM of Friends of Markstakes Common. 

I will be talking about how the 34 tress on the National Tree Register have fared since the last survey 13 years ago. A few have died, several have lost limbs, others bits, some appear to have changed very little at all. Its hard to take the long view of ancient trees such as oak, beech, hornbeam, silver birch or ash. Maybe the time to review is every 25 years, or in the case of oak trees, every 50 years? And to keep the process going for several hundred years. 

My art and curiosity as a wannabe arborist and environmentalist/woodland manager finds me both drawing and photographing these trees often: across all seasons and in all weathers. I find strong wind attracts me to the woods ... It intrigues me that beech and oak has a different tensile strength, so oak can be spotted growing through a beech tree by the way it bends and blow out of sync with the 'host' tree. Snow is perfect to add highlights to the winter silhouette of a tree. Spring sees the woodland floor covered in wood anemones and bluebells.