The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Plant a tree today – it all adds up
EVERY year during March the Tree council of Ireland organises The National Tree Week to promote all things aboricultural. To help raise our awareness and appreciation of trees, the importance of planting new trees and care of existing woodlands and even your domestic trees.
It was a love of trees that got me into taking up horticulture for a living, I started out intending to be a forester but growing up in an area devoid of local jobs in this field I segued into gardening which was an easy transition. This is something I have never regreted as there is no job I can think of that would give me such satisfaction and pleasure as I have had working in the gardening business.
The importance of trees to ours lives and to the planet is immeasurable. The fact that they take harmful carbon dioxide out of the air and as a by product give us back oxygen to breath is remarkable enough alone. That trees provide us with food, shelter, warmth and yes, wellbeing. Not to mention they are the most noticeable longest living and largest living things on earth, it should make us more humble about our own existence. Add to this that they just might save the planet from ‘us’ as well and whats not to like.
I read an article recently about how a world wide group of environmentalists have started a campagn to plant one million new trees to help compensate for America pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. I’m not sure of the science of this as I imagine this would only act as a token and not individually make an environmental difference but at the very least it will hopefully act as a catalyst for promoting the idea of mass tree planting across the world.
The last US administration had started the initiative to encourage the planting of ten billion new trees around the world and in India recently they broke the world record and planted sixty six million new trees in a day country wide. This really gives us something to build on.
So what can you do personally. You may feel that any small effort you make, say planting one tree, is inconsequential but you have to buy into the theroy that if every household in Ireland did the same, that amounts to a lot of new trees. Extend the theoory and if every single person in the world planted a tree we’d be up to 7.5 billion new trees in a year. Of course this is an ideological example and if we lived in an ideal world it wouldn’t even need suggesting.
But the theory is still there for you to believe in so I suggest you go ahead and plant your new tree this week and join a growing group of individuals trying to make a collective difference. Even better with many of our rural houses sited on half acre and larger sized plots why not desigante a corner of your garden as a wild woodland area. Instead of planting just one tree plant a copse of twenty and allow rough grass to naturalise beneath them. Low maintenance too.
You can mix your species or plant just one variety, either way you’ll be increasing your contribution twenty fold. Many native species can be bought as small plants, barerooted, from garden centres at the moment and they really arn’t expensive.
I have long been promoting the idea that all rural sites should have to plant at least one long lived native tree to keep our countryside well stocked for centuries to come.
I received a lovely email this week from a lady I had given some advice to via contact through this paper some three years ago. She very kindly thanked me for the advice which had obviously been successful as she said that every time she goes into her garden her heart lifts. That is the effect that gardens, nature, green spaces and particularly trees can have on us as individuals and as a species.