Trees in Britain

During most of the week, Steve Green sits behind his desk in Barking, part of east London’s ever-expanding sprawl. Surrounding him are the shopping centres, multi-storey car parks and congested streets that are the backdrop of modern urban existence.

But on Thursdays, his day off, things are different. On these days, Green plants trees. Spade in hand, he joins a group of volunteers building a new forest on the edge of the city. This winter they will plant more than 50,000 saplings, turning the ravaged landscape of a former quarry into a verdant woodland.

It is thanks to people like Green and the growing army of arboreal enthusiasts that Britain’s woodlands are flourishing once more.

Such a rise is all the more surprising given that the number of trees has been falling consistently for almost all of the past 5,000 years. From the Stone Age onwards, the woodland that originally covered Britain was gradually cut down to clear space for farms. The steady erosion of woodland continued until, by 1870, the lowest point had been reached. Just 4.8% of England was wooded. Vast expanses of countryside were almost barren of trees.

But here is where the story starts to take a counter-intuitive turn. With increasing industrialisation, more productive farming techniques and the burgeoning popularity of city living, pressure on farmland was relieved. Modern farming’s very productivity left far more land free for trees than when rural communities grew their own food.

“If you can now grow two tons of wheat on land where one ton grew before, you have to think about what happens to the land where the second ton grew,” says Oliver Rackham, an expert on the history of forestry in Britain. And so gradually the number of trees rose.

Where forests had once stood, small copses put down roots. Managed, sustainable woodland replaced the slash and burn of the past until, by 1980, 7.3% of England was wooded, with Surrey, London’s commuter heartland, its most wooded region.

But even combined with government “green” incentives, these trends alone cannot explain the pace of the afforestation. What made us suddenly become a nation of tree huggers? Like all the best stories, it started one dark and stormy night.

On the morning of October 16, 1987, southern and eastern England woke to find devastation. Twenty people had been killed by the worst storms in 250 years. Some 19 million trees had collapsed in hurricane-force winds. On some estates in the southeast, 95% of trees were wrenched from the ground. Leaders of today’s tree movement say that public opinion also shifted overnight.

“When people woke up on the morning after the great storm, suddenly all the landscapes and all the views they had taken for granted for years had changed,” said Jon Stokes, director of community projects for the Tree Council. “People began to think, ‘I need to sort this out and do something about it.’ The amazing thing is that it made such an impact that the effects are still being felt today.”

The Woodland Trust has seen its membership soar by 60% to more than 100,000 in the past two years. Over 7,500 volunteers monitor their local woodland as tree wardens, and Tree News, a specialist magazine, now sells more copies than the New Statesman.

In the course of only three days last year, 30,700 adults and children planted 100,000 trees, winning themselves a place in the Guinness Book of Records. Lesley Robinson, a teacher, is typical of the new trend. She is so hooked that she goes on holidays planting and conserving trees.

“It’s so completely different from my job, which is indoors. Going out for a week doing physical work is absolutely wonderful,” she said. “We regularly take children out to plant trees, and when they go back a few years later and see the growth, it is something they remember and value.”