What I wanted to spend the day thinking about was what we lose with spring. As I cycled to work I was meditating on what gets hidden as the trees put on their shrouds. The structure of a Tree is often striking, a twisted, intricate candelbra, an explorative intervention in space that would be difficult to replicate realistically by modelling. The tree makes no decisions, yet its biochemistry shapes it with the help of feedback mechanisms, putting out a bud there, a shoot there, putting energy into that particular branch, sub-branches shooting off it, until it swells into a heavy scaffold limb. A branch twisted that way (and not this) is not arbitrary, it only looks that way when we see the overall result. The layering of shade and light in the canopy, which determines which buds will burst and which will remain latent, changes with each new spurt of growth. The structure of the tree is a mystery because it destroys the conditions of its own creation as it grows. Genetics has its place, but only in the particular reaction to the particular light and shade to which each part of the tree is exposed – not even clones take the same form exactly. In a veteran tree the conditions have changed so repeatedly, so constantly over the decades and centuries that the tree’s history, while visible in its structure, can never quite be traced back. The growth of the tree, the structure of its wood, is irreversible, irreproducible, a solid record of fleeting realities.

What I actually thought about today was the fact that the Landscape company planning a new path in one of our parks, a project they have been working on for two years, has entirely failed to think about the trees, and so was in danger of trenching through the roots of a dozen significant trees. Their failure has put the work onto me of defending the trees when it should have been their job. I am guilt-tripped into it, wanting to see a good scheme, though I don’t have time to do it, and don’t want to spend my time talking to landscape designers who know nothing about trees even though you’d think learning about trees would be one of the most necessary parts of training for a job that is about landscape. What is a landscape without trees? It’s a lawn. Or a field. Yet, strangely, landscape architects often throw in trees as an afterthought, or ignore the two hundred year old landscape feature, or treat it as an inconvenience. I suppose if I were a landscape architect I too would think like this, but I like to think I’d rebel, I like to think I’d notice the most significant, oldest features of the landscapes I was working with. But who knows? Perhaps I, in my own way, am as blinkered as them. But probably not.