Country Life
Planting a tree
Peter Quince
In sanguine moments it is possible to think that a noble, leafy luxuriance will come upon this country as a result of the 1973 tree-planting campaign. It is always salutary, of course, to translate such large abstractions into the humbler realities. In our parish, so far, the treeplanting year has seen only half a dozen infant specimens introduced into the local soil. I suppose it does not seem a lot.
Upon reflection though, I do not think it is too bad. The parish council, it is said, has plans for operations on a rather larger scale in the autumn.
This, I judge, is the third occasion during the past few centuries that a significant attempt to enrich our village stock of trees has been made. It is somewhat overdue, for only a casual glance around is a reminder that although we are well supplied with magnificently-grown mature trees, they are often getting sadly near the end of their life-span. In, say, fifty years time, the scene is likely to be transformed, and, unleess we do something about it now, very much for the worse.
We enjoy, as I said, the fruits of at least two distinct periods of generous planting. A great many of our trees date from the latter part of the eighteenth century. Nearly all our chestnuts, and numerous other specimens, are of this vintage. I like to think of the bewigged gentlemen of those days earnestly discussing the art of planting as they walked about our village (which must, in fact, have looked much as it does now, if one overlooks minor points such as the rougher roads, and absence of cars, and several open spaces where Victorian cottages now stand). They planted, no doubt, chiefly for their own satisfaction, but a they also served succeeding generations well, and I hope they had some pleasure in the foreknowledge that posterity would thank them.
The second planting phase occurred a hundred years later, in the confident days of the Victorian countryside, and there is a fine assortment of trees today to bear witness to it. To this period, notably, belong the two Wellingtonias which still dignify the scene. There used to be a third, but, as so many others have done elsewhere in recent years, it died not long ago. (It is easy to fix the date of Wellingtonias, because the species was not brought to this country until 1853, and a great many surviving examples were planted, as ours were, in the 1860s.) And now, one more century on, we are trying to renew the planting tradition. The individual efforts which have occurred so far have been prompted, I note, by a desire to improve the benefactor's own view as well as to confer a benefit upon the village at large. This seems right and sensible and is also in keeping with the tradidion. The eighteenth-century parson who planted a cedar on the vicarage lawn was intending, of course, to enhance his own surroundings, but equally he enhanced those of everyone else. We who have now put little trees in odd corners where, one day, they will be seen to advantage from our own windows, are doing the same thing.
What to plant is a difficult matter. Those who have put in oaks and chestnuts have made use of sites where there is ample room for growth. There is nothing more dismal than seeing a tree outgrow its space, and thus fall victim to untimely surgery. My idea was to plant something on the grassy edge of the lane which runs past my own house, and there was no future, in the corner I had in mind, for anything very big. I settled for a hawthorn, which happens to be one of my favourite trees. It was rather pleasant to dig a hole in the strip of land beside the lane and launch the budding twig on its new life.
As I sprinkled compost and bone-meal about the frail roots I could imagine my tree giving pleasure to people who will walk along this lane long after I am dead. Before then, needless to say, I shall hope to get some pleasure myself out of it. In fact I am getting some already, as I observe its pink buds swell slowly but unmistakably into miniature green' leaves.
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