Tree enthusiasts who read our last blog will be wondering what happened to the seeds we carefully buried in a box of compost on our first taster day. Carefully following the instructions of our horticultural guru Simon Abbott, I had put our box of mixed tree seeds in the garden and covered it with leaves. It sat outside all winter getting plenty of “cold units” (Simon’s explanation was that tree seeds need to be exposed to cold for a period of time) and then I had a look one sunny Spring day to see if anything had happened.  And had it?  Well, yes and no. Nearly all the horse chestnut seeds (conkers) had germinated (see picture), and some of the acorns, but no sign of any of the other seeds. Perhaps it was too cold, with such a hard winter.

Success! - a conker seedling

I’ve got a bit of a thing at the moment about trees. I think they are very important for our emotional and spiritual life, as well as looking good and giving us wood and other products. Many of them should be in the Guinness book of records. Did you know that, of all the living things on the planet, trees are the OLDEST (bristlecone pines in California, over 4000 years old), and LARGEST (the redwoods, also in California)? But at least Scotland has some of the smallest trees in the world, the dwarf willows in the Scottish mountains that grow only an inch (2.5 cm.) tall.

Rosie and I went on a “social forestry” course at the Green Wood Centre in Ironbridge, Shropshire. Over four days we had talks on working therapeutically with people in woodlands (like care-farming but in woods), interspersed with practical sessions. We tried our hand at using a felling axe and two-person cross-cut saw, we helped weave a willow shelter and even started to make a chair. It was great fun and quite inspirational.

Keele had a counselling psychology conference in March. With a colleague (counsellor and psychotherapist Janet Heath) I ran two workshops on “trees as co-therapists in counselling”. Ideally, we would have taken everyone into Keele University woods (http://www.keele.ac.uk/arboretum/), but we were limited for time. Instead we laid on a “woodland floor encounter” with lots of objects Janet Heath had picked up in her own woods such as branches, bags of leaves, and pine cones. People were invited to pick one of the objects and “connect” with it for a minute or two. They then shared experiences.

It was both interesting and a privilege to hear how this brief encounter with trees for some people had sparked off childhood memories, whilst others enjoyed the texture or shape of the object they had picked. I think that encouraging our “nature-connectedness” is really important psychologically for us all, and of course that is what “Green Age” is fundamentally about.

"It'll be a while before we can play conkers...."