If Samuel Hayes was alive today he would probably have his own TV series. I can picture him now, traipsing around Ireland in his wellies, waxing lyrical about wonderful trees, and urging us all to plant acorns, writes Mary Mulvihill.
Unfortunately, Hayes was 200 years ahead of this time: he died in 1795 at the age of 52 - felled, like many a fine oak tree, in his prime.
Just a year earlier he had published his - dare I say? - "groundbreaking" book, A Practical Treatise on Planting and the Management of Woods and Coppices. Ireland's first tree book, its 200 pages were packed with practical information drawn from Hayes's 20 years' experience of planting his Wicklow estate. Now lovingly reprinted as a facsimile by New Island press (€30), it comes with a foreword by Thomas Pakenham, author of the global bestseller Meetings with Remarkable Trees.
But the Hayes book is more than just some 18th-century DIY guide to forestry. It is also an extended hymn to trees, a call to cherish woodlands, and a heartfelt cry to stop clear-felling. At a time when the last of the native Irish woodlands were disappearing, Hayes's ideas may well have seemed eccentric.
In those days Ireland, having been a net timber exporter for centuries, had begun importing timber, and one visitor wrote that "the most striking thing. . .is the total absence of trees of any kind". Enter Samuel Hayes, barrister and MP for Wicklow, who believed the future lay in managed woodlands, coppices (a rare thing in Ireland then, as now) and reforestation.
His book begins by giving the economic argument for planting trees: bet you didn't know that in 1794 an acre of 25-year-old oak coppice was worth £30! Or that a 50-year-old oak could provide a barrel of bark for the tanning industry and up to 20 shillings worth of timber. And if that isn't enough, Hayes then gives the ornamental argument, devoting the second part of his book to accounts of some remarkable Irish trees, complete with details of their age and girth.
It is this information, about Irish estates and specimen trees, that makes Hayes's book so interesting historically. The trees he picks out for special mention include evergreens at Kilruddery, Scots fir at Luttrelstown, an outstanding elm at Carton, a remarkable ash at Leixlip and another near Kinnity Church in Co Offaly, a venerable yew tree at Glendalough. . .It would make you want to go and see how these trees are doing but, sadly, few of them survive. And as for the Shillelagh oak woods - read that section and weep: the introduction of an iron forge there in 1692 was, Hayes wrote, the "bane of all our times".
But what of Hayes's own Wicklow estate? When he inherited Hayesville at the age of 27, it amounted to 3,000 hectares, a relatively modest area then for a Wicklow demesne. He set about planting hundreds of trees there (happily, many of these survive), gave vent to his artistic talents by designing a new residence, and renamed the place "Avondale".
Later, of course, it would become famous as the home of his cousin and heir, Charles Stewart Parnell. (Thomas Pakenham suggests in his foreword that Hayes, a member of the orthodox Protestant gentry, would have taken a dim view of his kinsman's behaviour.) Today, Avondale is the home of Irish forestry, and Hayes would surely have approved.
In 1904 the Department of Agriculture acquired 200 hectares of Avondale and began experiments there that would dramatically alter the Irish landscape. The man behind the experiments was Augustine Henry, a noted Irish plant collector. Henry had spent 20 years working in China and, while there, discovered many plant species new to science, several of which are named after him. He introduced hundreds of oriental plants into Europe, among them the Chinese gooseberry and its cousin the "kiwi" fruit.
When, in the early 1900s, Irish reforestation was starting, Scandinavian conifers were most often planted. But Augustine Henry realised that Ireland's climate was closer to that of the north-west US and Canada and that species from those regions, such as Sitka spruce and Douglas fir, might suit Ireland better than Scandinavian ones.
To test this idea, Henry and the forestry director A.C. Forbes planted several types of tree in one-acre experimental plots at Avondale. As predicted, the Sitka spruce grew well and it came to be the tree of choice for the State forestry programme.
Those experimental plots survive, alongside trees Samuel Hayes planted in the 1770s. Avondale is now owned by Coillte, the Irish forestry board, and Wicklow is Ireland's most heavily wooded county, with nearly 20 per cent under trees, albeit mostly conifers, compared with 9 per cent for Ireland as a whole.
That tree cover is increasing all the time, though, thanks in part to the wonderful Millennium Forests project, which planted a native sapling for every household. Ours is at Shelton which, as luck would have it, is one of the Wicklow estates mentioned by Hayes in his book.
So, if you have any interest in trees, then why not visit Avondale, and while there pay homage at Hayes's final resting place in nearby Rathdrum church. Then buy (and read) this lovely facsimile book, and plant a seedling. Think of it as an investment in the future. Agus maireann an crann.