A leg-up to bark up the wrong tree

The Mail’s treeplanting campaign is splendid. During my years in the Rotary Club, I was involved in a number of plantings, but the one ingrained in my memory is the first one in 1991. As part of the World Rotary project Preserve Planet earth, Kew Rotary Club decided to plant a new tree on Kew Green. I arranged coverage by the local paper and a TV gardening presenter agreed to be our celebrity guest. The first problem was that the council could not plant a tree on the proposed date, so it would have to be done two days earlier and we would have to pretend to plant it on the day. Then, on the morning in question, those involved arrived on the green to find the silver maple there, but the branches were still tied up. So while our vice-president knelt down, another member had to stand on his back and climb up the tree to undo the branches. We then proceeded with the so-called planting. The photographer found the cutting of the branches more interesting, so that picture appeared in the local paper. And the celebrity guest was not even mentioned!

Derek Scott, Fakenham, Norfolk.