What is Your Favourite Tree?

My favourite tree is blossom. Blossom located within the Alnwick Garden ornamental garden.
It was the first to bloom before the cherry orchard. It gave me a sense of hope and peace. The sun was shining and brought overall happiness within and outside. It was the sign of spring had begun.

The trees around the ruined cottage at Blawearie (Bewick Moor).

The walk up to Blawearie has been a favourite of mine for over 50 years. The group of trees round the cottage come into view first and mark not only the cottage but also the site of the garden behind the cottage hidden within an outcrop of rock. Now barley visible but quite clear when we first visited are little paths and tiny terraces built up for flowers and bulbs. Years later Will Taylor, the great fiddler, who had known the family that lived and worked there told me the story of this remarkable garden. Apparently the young shepherd who lived there was ‘walking out’ with a young woman from a nearby village. When he asked her to marry him she initially refused. The thought of living”way out there” was just too much. However she relented and said “if you can build me a flower garden sheltered in those rocks I will marry you.” He rose to the challenge!

Sycamores often get maligned but I love this group of four which shelter our house from the prevailing winds. Up here at Warenton near Belford the weather can be wild but they stood strong through Arwen as they have for at least half a century. They offer nesting, feeding and roosting for our local birds and bats and occasionally a red squirrel will break a journey amongst their protective branches. Without them the landscape would be bleaker.

There is an oak tree in my late parents’ garden, which I have known nearly my whole life. It stands higher than their house, an ancient, bifurcated trunk, its crazy mass of zigzag branches underpinning a glorious round green crown. The tree seethes with life. There are networks and circuits within it that I will never know, and plenty that I do, for it is home to multitudes, from the blackbirds that sing from it, to shining emerald beetles, mysterious, papery moths, thread-legged spiders, the tiny ethereal bats that flit round it at dusk; and the raucous jackdaws and magpies which strut in its shade. Branching under the earth, its roots’ secret roadways transfer water, nitrogen, carbon, invisibly connecting countless more species in a hidden mycorrhizal network that leaves its signature in fairy-rings over the lawn.

I do not know how old the tree is. At a guess, at least a couple of hundred years. When we moved there nearly 60 years ago, a neighbour, then in her 90s, told us childhood stories about playing under it when the garden was a field. Looking back at those stories now I measure the scale of memory in that tree. The tiny village that old lady knew, and the world to which it connected, are no longer recognisable; but the tree stands where it always did, its branches holding the ‘living memory’ of that lost world.

Season by season, the oak tree marks the passing of time. As I grew up, it was our clock. In spring we waited eagerly for the scaled golden buds to burst into those astonishingly vivid and tender early leaves. In summer we played chase in its spidery shade, dared each other to climb its slippery trunk. I sat beneath it, studying: O levels, A levels, university exams. Every autumn, my mother grumbled about the quantity of falling leaves. We raked them into damp, sweet-smelling heaps, acorns crunching underfoot; lit smoky bonfires that never really burned.

As every schoolchild knows, trees are great factories, absorbing carbon dioxide by day. As a by-product of photosynthesis, a fully grown oak tree can emit enough oxygen each day for four people. I look at that tree and see the vast machinery of breath: our breath, solid and alive. For nearly 60 years everything my parents felt and thought or loved was lived within metres of its branches. Their lives in its proximity are inextricably absorbed in this tree’s physical presence. Their breath is the grain of its wood.
I am fiercely protective of this oak, I want to say to everyone, just look at it: its living presence, its perfect round crown; quiet some days, on others, a restless, wind-tossed, roaring sea; soon to undergo that awe-inspiring annual metamorphosis into burnt orange, lemon, fiery copper-brown. Before long, its crisp leaves will hiss and eddy over our lawns. Then it will tower, black and bare-branched, through winter, a fearsome signpost to the miraculous spring. It is bigger than us – its life, its cycles, and the cities of life and memory within and beneath its sheltering embrace. I want to look after it, for the children who next live beside it to feel in its presence our living memory when we, like last year’s leaves, are gone.At What a Wonderful World, we are dedicated to providing support and resources to those in need. Our mission is to make a positive impact on the world by helping those who are struggling. With your help, we can continue to make a difference in the lives of many.

These trees in Morpeth and the land around them were my childhood playground. In the days before mobile phones or helicopter parenting, we all just "went out to play." Everybody knew we'd probably end up playing here at "The Dumps" (no idea why it's called that) and that someone's parent would walk along to yell "tea time" at some point to make us all head back to our respective homes at approximately the stipulated time. The later you managed to stay out, the cooler you were. Yes, we had watches and some of us could even tell the time, but why would you ever voluntarily go home and submit to being told what to do by grown-ups when you had the run of this place?
 

The farm behind is long gone, so no-one finds a herd of cows in the garden by accident anymore. The farm's omnivorous but sociable goats are no more: once one ate its tether rope, escaped and tried to join in with our games, not quite understanding that it wasn't a human. The “rezzie” (reservoir seems a rather grand name for the marshy puddles of the Catch Burn) no longer froths with frogspawn that each spring we took home to house in tanks, pelting home from school each day to see whose would become tadpoles first, then whose were biggest, then whose were the first frogs that needed carefully to be released back into the wild. Competitive tadpoling was taken incredibly seriously then.
 

The red squirrels, gentle, agile, occasionally bizarrely hyper-active, and remarkably happy to be hand-fed by children, have been chased out by greys and rabbits. The south-facing brambles, juicier and sweeter than most, were where we learned our first swear-words, as Dads were sent out with the weans to gather them in autumn and forgot that they were supposed to mind their language even when being impaled by thorns. I’m not sure what hurt more: the prickles or being smacked by your Mum when she heard your newly acquired vocabulary! 

Storm Arwen felled one or two trees and truncated a few more, but the trees that seemed tall as a child are now enormous. They “talk” constantly, swaying and soughing in the breeze and its disconcertingly spooky when it’s still and they fall mute.
 

The Dumps don’t seem to belong to children anymore. Some children still get used to their birthday present bikes there, but always closely supervised by anxious adults. Dog walkers or runners checking their personal bests still use the grass, but they zoom past and are completely unaware of the hidey holes, secret dens and best brother-ambushing places of my childhood. This is where we learnt freedom, independence, a love of the outdoors, plants that were and weren’t safe to touch or eat, how to get on with people (even if you didn't particularly like them, a hugely useful life skill) and who you could (and couldn't) trust to help you get down from a tree when you'd accidentally climbed it higher than you'd intended and were stuck! From the canopy you could see for miles, the sea in one direction and in the other, the railway line whooshing off towards Edinburgh, the Toon or even, implausibly exotically, London and beyond. The horizon and the future seemed limitless, and I wish a similarly infinity for “my” trees. In another 40 years’ time they might even have grown so much they’re almost in outer space!
 

A walk through National Trust property, Cragside, at any time of year will reveal

some of the largest and most imposing examples of ornamental conifers found

anywhere in the UK. Collectively they make up the fantasy mountain landscape

created by William and Margaret Armstrong in the late nineteenth century.

Individually, they offer an opportunity to be close to an extraordinary heritage and

find favourite personal examples of their kind.

Perhaps conifers are often overlooked as favourite types of trees. Of course, they

don’t normally present showy spring flowers and vibrant autumn foliage and

superficially one could be forgiven for thinking that different conifers look very

similar to each other.

However, they do bring an imposing height, resinous scent and they offer textured

green shades of needle shaped leaves every day of the year. Look closely and the

differences between species and individuals become more apparent; firs have

smooth bark and large candle-shaped cones above the branches, Douglas trees

are some of the tallest trees in the country and the world, they have deep fissured

bark and have cones with bracts that look like mouse tails. Hemlocks have massive

boughs and small drooping cones while pine trees stand proud in the morning and

evening light showing off their blue- green leaves and golden bark. Appreciating

these subtleties is like meeting friends- they please the heart and give a warm

gladness of recognition.

Cragside has a heritage of dozens of champion trees.  These are some of the

tallest, rarest or most important trees found in the country and we are lucky to have

access to this wonder throughout the year. Keeping on the paths to avoid walking

on the roots is important to protect them for generations to come.  Nevertheless, it’s

easy to get close to them and appreciate them as individuals as well as collective

worldwide wonders of nature.’

 I have looked out on this old ash tree each morning for the last half of my life. My children played on it when they were young and hid in its hollow trunk. I hope that it never gets die-back.