2 weeks Ago By Heather Saul
Global trading relations are fractious. New communication technology has shaken trust in the establishment. At home, inequality runs deep, with two thirds of the nation’s wealth in the hands of a super wealthy 10 per cent.
The King is losing sleep over a son. And in north London, a tiny sapling is bursting into the sunlight.It is 1525, and an oak tree on the edges of Whitewebbs Park in Enfield has just started its life.
How much has changed in the tree’s approximate 500-year life. And yet, how much remains the same. But that is the power of trees – to remind us of all that is older, bigger and greater than ourselves, our transient lives and trivial concerns.
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addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }Yet we treat our trees poorly. This month, that oak was felled.The slaying of the oak in Enfield’s Toby Carvery car park is unforgivable.
With a mighty 20ft girth and a listing on the Woodland Trust’s ancient tree inventory, it may only have been midlife, with the potential to make it to 1,000 years old. Yesterday, in one of those apologies/not apologies usually connected with spoilt toddlers, restaurant owners Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) apologised for “the upset it has caused” but not for the actual felling.It claimed the tree was “mostly dead and diseased” and a risk to the public.
I can see them there now, with their clipboards and health and safety spreadsheets, more fixated on an eventuality that may never come to pass in a thousand years than a natural beauty that has existed for 500 years.if(window.adverts) { window.
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }#color-context-related-article-3203257 {--inews-color-primary: #E33A11;--inews-color-secondary: #F7F3EF;--inews-color-tertiary: #E33A11;} Read Next square NEWS Sycamore Gap tree could take 80 years to regrow after shoots emerge from stumpRead MoreAs William Blake wrote: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”Enfield Council, which leases the land on which the tree stood, is outraged.
Initially it called in the Metropolitan Police, which deemed it to be a civil issue, so now plans are afoot to sue M&B.Council leader Ergin Erbil said: “We have evidence that this tree was alive and starting to grow new spring leaves when this action was taken. Our team of experts checked the tree in December 2024 and found it was healthy and posed no risk to the neighbouring car park [or] its users.
”An emergency tree preservation order has now been imposed on its stunted remains. This is far from the first time we have seen “a green thing that stands in the way” sentenced to the saw.In 2023, a “midnight massacre” in Plymouth saw 100 trees felled to make way for a new development after weeks of protests from locals.
Dozens of ancient oaks were cleared for HS2. Highways England lopped down 400,000 trees over several years to upgrade the A14 in Cambridgeshire. Sheffield City Council was forced to apologise for its felling spree.
And in Torbay, the council broke locals’ hearts when they cut down 48 iconic palm trees on the seafront.Beyond any loss to human sensibilities is the enormous loss to nature. Trees remain one of our best defences against climate change and are essential for nature to thrive.
But up to 70 per cent of our ancient woodlands are gone or have been damaged, and since the early 1900s, 81 per cent of traditional orchards have been lost. Global Forest Watch reports a 15 per cent decrease in UK tree cover between 2000 and 2023.We are left with three billion trees covering 13 per cent of our land – around 45 trees per person.
But much of that is on the commercially grown plantations in Scotland, which doesn’t hugely help with biodiversity. And with a government fixated on house building, trees will not be getting in the way. If bats have become public enemy number one in Going for Growth, then trees aren’t far behind.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }Planning rules may be shredded, but politicians will quickly learn that locals’ love for trees, which provide the landmarks of our lives, will be harder to destroy.Sycamore Gap was a vivid example of the impact one tree can have. When the 150-year-old sycamore, which stood in a dip alongside Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, was cut down one night in October 2023, it led to a national outpouring of grief.
The tree had been made famous by its appearance in Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and more importantly the video for Bryan Adams’s movie soundtrack “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. But it was the stories of family picnics, wedding proposals and sprinkling of ashes beneath its boughs that were so powerful. Two men are due to go on trial soon in connection with the incident.
Last year I was privileged to see some of the young seedlings grown by the National Trust from seeds rescued from Sycamore Gap. They are already topping 10 feet tall and by this winter will be strong enough to be planted out by 49 recipients of the Trust’s Trees of Hope programme. Beneficiaries include the Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease in Leeds and Holly’s Hope, in memory of murdered schoolgirl Holly Newton in Hexham, Northumberland.
The saplings are wonderful reminders of the hope that can come after loss. As Maya Angelou’s great poem, When Great Trees Fall, tells us: “And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly.”Perhaps.
But let’s hope there’s no peace for Toby Carvery any time soon.Alison Phillips was editor of the Daily Mirror from 2018-24; she won Columnist of the Year at the 2018 National Press Awards.
