A celebration of trees: March: Forests

Saturday 21 March was the 2015 International Day of Forests so this month I celebrate that conglomeration of trees and undergrowth we variously label a forest, jungle, woods or woodland or, in my native New Zealand, bush.

Delamere Forest

If anyone needs convincing as to why we need to stop deforestation and create more forests around the world, here are some of the reasons:

Royd Wood, Tabley

ü              Forests are the most biologically diverse ecosystems on our land masses.

ü              Forests provide a home to more than 80% of our terrestrial species of plants, insects and animals.

ü              Forests protect the watersheds that provide 75% of the world’s fresh water.

ü              Forests play a vital part in our adaptation to and prevention of global climate change.

ü              Forests provide shelter and jobs to forest-dependant communities.

ü              More than one billion people around the world depend on forests and trees for their food and income.

ü              Forests are the earth’s lungs, contributing to the balance of oxygen, carbon dioxide and humidity in the air.

ü              Each year every person in the world eats about 11kg of food from forests (leaves, fruit, mushrooms, honey, etc).

ü              Forests and trees are the source of many medicines, treating illnesses like malaria, heart disease and cancer.

 As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says, ‘To build a sustainable, climate-resilient future for all, we must invest in our world's forests. That will take political commitment at the highest levels, smart policies, effective law enforcement, innovative partnerships and funding.’  

Wood near Gravestones Farm, Pickmere

We are blessed with some lovely forests and woodlands near where I’m currently living, in the English county of Cheshire, so I am fortunate indeed to be able to walk regularly through these magical places. The Japanese have a term for walking in the woods that I particularly like – it’s shinrin yoku, which literally means ‘forest bathing’. I think the world would be a much better place if we all bathed regularly in forests.

Woodlands at Tatton Park, Knutsford

A new planting at Spud Wood, near Lymm

Woodland near Comberbach

Holford Moss, near Plumley

Arboretum at Marbury Country Park, near Northwich

Mill Wood, Arley

Autumn in Cheshire

I was hoping to arrive in time to see the last of the autumn colour here in Cheshire before the winter wind and rain blows it all away, and I’ve been lucky. In just a week, here’s what I’ve been privileged to see, accompanied by the thoughts of others who’ve appreciated autumn in their turn.

Dunham Massey

‘No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.’ John Donne, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Tatton Park

‘I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.’ Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks

Delamere Forest

‘There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.’ Joe L. Wheeler

Dunham Massey

‘Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.’ Jim Bishop

Neumann's Flash, Northwich Community Woodlands

‘The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.’ Henry Beston

 

Tatton Park

‘Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.’ Samuel Butler

Northwich Community Woodlands

‘The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.’ John Greenleaf Whittier

Tatton Park

‘And I rose / In rainy autumn / And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...’ Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems

Dunham Massey

‘Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.’ Sharon Kay Penman, Time and Chance

Dunham Massey

‘Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.’ William Allingham

Delamere Forest

‘Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.’ George Eliot

Dunham Massey

‘For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.’ Edwin Way Teale, Autumn Across America.