Eclectic avenues
AN 80-tree avenue to be planted at Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, is among 70 National Trust projects for The Queen’s Green Canopy (Town & Country, January 19). Stretching 1,575ft, the planting will be particularly poignant, as only one tree survives from the original 1766 avenue, the rest having been lost to Dutch elm disease, ash dieback and the great storm of 1987.
Another avenue of 24 sweet chestnuts will spring up at Abinger Roughs in Surrey, where the last of the original trees planted in the 18th century were lost in 1987; 15 new poplars will re-create Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackvillewest’s 1932 vision for an avenue at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent; a 66ft-long pear-tree archway will emerge at Rudyard Kipling’s home, Bateman’s in East Sussex; and Tredegar House in South Wales will see its 300-year-old avenue to Basseleg church replenished with oaks.
Other plantings include 500 trees at Anglesey Abbey, 300 in the parkland of Hinton Ampner, Hampshire, 15 apple trees at Agatha Christie’s Greenway, Devon, a new walnut on Mottistone village green on the Isle of Wight, which will re-form the six-tree circle surrounding an old cottage well, and an oak and field maple at Chartwell in Kent, one of which will stand next to a tree planted for the Queen Mother’s 90th birthday.
‘There is something special about marking national occasions such as this year’s jubilee through tree planting —knowing that the trees should grow and last for generations to come as a marker of a significant moment in history,’ says John Deakin, the Trust’s head of trees and woodland.
Anyone in the UK can plant any number of trees in honour of The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Visit www. queensgreencanopy.org for planting advice and information on how to pin your jubilee tree and make it official.