Back in 2011 the TCV team in Kent were thrilled to receive a large amount of money from HLF (around £650,000 if memory serves me well) to conduct a Kent Heritage Trees project over five years. Google it & you’ll see what went on and all the great achievements of the project.
At the outset TCV were seeking a few people with experience of heritage trees already under their belts to help train up the volunteers who would be tasked with discovering and recording Kent’s most special trees. Having worked on two Heritage Tree books with the Tree Council, I teamed up with Jon Stokes from TC & went to a couple of training days, with the specific aim of briefing the participants about the best ways to photograph trees – an important aspect of the recording process.
The following year I was casting about for sponsorship to make a book about the oak tree in Britain possible. The publishers were putting up some funds, but bearing in mind the amount of work that goes into producing a large illustrated book it didn’t really add up as a viable proposition. I went out to a few people I knew in the tree world and was rewarded by five very enthusiastic supporters, among them the Kent TCV team. My book “The British Oak” was published in 2013 (a second edition in 2016) and TCV (bless ’em) were very much a part of it.
My latest offering, in the light of the relentless spread of ash dieback, is “ASH” – a beautiful monograph about the ash tree…. before we have lost the vast majority of them!