We have so many people and organisations urging us - rightly - to grow more trees for Ireland, to releaf Ireland as Crann, that fine organisation likes to put it. There's Coillte too, with its natural business instinct for returns - i.e. a lot of fast-growing conifers. But there are individuals who like to grow trees to their own pattern.
And preferably starting from scratch, i.e. with the seed, be it beech mast or nut, acorn, pine nut or whatever. Many are lucky to start young. Christopher Lloyd is a name well known in England and beyond. He recently wrote that he was fortunate to live on the same property where he was born, so that he has seen many trees, put down as seed by him, grow to maturity. There are many who have put a few acorns down in a pot and find them, after less than 20 years - transplanted, of course - grown to a height of maybe 30 feet. And Lloyd is still as keen to start new trees as he was when young. After all, you can fill pot after pot with young trees and give them away to friends if you haven't the space. He does suggest that "it is enough to see them well started; imagination fills in the rest." Many of us have had the rush of blood to the head, the filling of every vista with trees, and then the realisation that some, hopefully not many, have to come down because your view is blocked or because you have planted so closely that trees such as pedunculate oak cannot spread their arms because they are so crowded.
In fact, a mighty oak may demand on its own up to a quarter of an acre. Then it can really become what it is designed for, and not just another jumble of branches. Great enthusiasm at first; then come hard decisions. Lloyd reminds us that something shorter-lived than an oak (an ash, a beech) will give pleasure in its life and will add to variety. You remember Dryden's lines: The monarch oak, the patriot of trees,/ Shoots, rising up, and spreads by slow degrees./ Three centuries he grows and three he stays,/ Supreme in state, and in three more decays. But there are lovely colourful maples, e.g. Japanese maple; there is, too, the delightful strawberry tree, fruits turning red now as the flowers cluster in lovely white bell shapes. A darling tree.