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Susy Smith chooses her favourite tree from her top trunks
My garden is surrounded by trees – a rare thing in a suburban plot. So often, trees are removed during building work, because they are stealing someone’s light or, perhaps, because they are diseased – an increasing threat to many species in Britain.
All of these are sound reasons, but the result is often soulless gardens, with little to soften metres of fencing, and houses that back on to one another and overlook their neighbours. It’s hard to find peace in such a space.
Trees bring height and breadth. They create texture with their varying leaf shapes and tangles of branches, and they introduce movement as they sway or shimmer in the breeze. They soften the hard edges of buildings and filter the sun to form an ever-changing display of light and shade. They soak up noise and pollution, and they provide roosting and nesting sites for birds. And let us not forget that trees have a presence, something larger and greater and more long-lived than us
– if we give them a chance.
When I heard about this month’s feature, My Favourite Tree (page 60), I asked if I too could write about my top dendrological delight. But I have fallen at the first hurdle. How do I choose? Should it be the magnificent black walnut I see most days on one of my regular walks? Said to be the oldest and largest specimen in the country, it was planted early in the 18th century for Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II, and is a proud survivor of the Great Storm of 1987 when many other trees around it were lost. I have twice spotted a little owl in its branches. Should I choose one of the majestic London planes beside the river on another walk? These beautiful giants, miraculous in their tolerance of pollution, exude strength and permanence and I love their leaf shape and their pale, speckled bark.
Then I decide that my tree of choice should be one of ‘my trees’: one that I can see from my windows on waking and silhouetted against the sky as dusk falls. Contenders would include the 15-metre cherry outside my bedroom that brings beautiful blossom and then fruit to feed the birds in the summer. Or there’s the mighty ash that, at around 21 metres tall, dominates our skyline. It stands in the garden of our neighbours and has recently been thinned out with its heavy limbs braced to protect them. It is reckoned to be between 120 and 160 years old. How incredible! Think of how its surroundings have changed in that time and yet there it still stands, noble and strong, and will hopefully do so for many years to come – ash-dieback disease permitting.
In and around the garden, we have many more trees: another ash, sycamores, a large holly, a second cherry and a tall conifer. And that’s not counting the smaller, daintier species of birch, hazel, crab apple, winter-flowering cherry and a Cornus kousa. At the height of summer, they all meld to create a restful and enveloping backdrop of green, hiding the neighbouring buildings and filtering noise so that the garden becomes a quiet haven where we are not overlooked. It’s hard to believe a train line runs along the back of us and that, outside the front door, buses are trundling by and people are passing, going about their daily business.
In autumn, individual trees become more obvious as they change to yellows and golds mixed with reds and bronze. But there is one tree I haven’t yet mentioned and I think, in the end, it has to be my chosen one. The old apple that sits at the heart of my garden isn’t magnificent like the ash or cherry. It couldn’t even be called a thing of beauty. It is gnarled and misshapen after losing several limbs over the years. It leans from right to left across the middle of the garden and, apart from the crown, only has one outcrop of branches. But I love it. Each year, robins nest in its ivy, magpies build in the uppermost branches and a hole in the trunk is occupied alternately by squirrels or parakeets.
It supports huge globes of mistletoe that we cut for Christmas, and I have trained a ‘Rambling Rector’ rose into its branches so that when it flowers in May, the tree looks as if it’s in blossom all over again. The fruit it gives is variable and too small to be worth picking, but the blackbirds love it. Even in winter, its sculptural form is a delight. Every time there’s a storm, I fear we might lose it. I once bumped into the previous owners of the house, and the first thing they said to me was, “Is the old apple tree still there?” They clearly loved it, too. We all need our trees.