Our attachment to trees is immense - we wince when we see a few branches being cut back, and protest when whole trees come down. Some arboreal aficionados tell Simon Miller about their favourite trees
KEEP GROWING DOWN: MARTIN WRIGHT, FOUNDER OF THE DESIGH AGENCY GOSPEL TM
I grew up on Blackhorse Avenue, which was separated from the Phoenix Park by a wall. So my playground was the park, which housed wonderful, wonderful trees. My tree was the Lookout Tree in O'Brien's Plantation. still say hello to it now, because my day starts with a walk in the park.
I used to climb it with my friends Joey O'Neill or Bugsy Daly. We'd look out and dream of foreign lands. Sometimes I'd climb it on my own and dream; climb into the canopy and look out and that vista would change with my imagination into the Kalahari Desert or the plains of Wyoming. I looked out and I saw the Sioux nation in front of me. The great joy in my life is that I've had a career that actually delved into my imagination. I eventually got paid for dreaming.
I suppose the Lookout Tree has also given me an outlook on life, on real possibilities, because when I trace back my early life in the park there's a sense of adventure. When you climb into a tree and sit there comfortably, you get a great sense of freedom. Possibilities come in. Dare I say it, just free float, with ease, certainly with comfort, and be that bit more spontaneous and not afraid.
I want to continue, on my early morning walk as I pass by the Lookout Tree, to acknowledge it, give it respect, for a tree that has such a significant part in my life. When I pass it, I touch it, I touch the leaves. There is that spiritual connection there that reminds me of the journey of the early years, the early and formative years. To remind myself today, look it's still there. The Lookout Tree was a great catalyst for me. To launch, unbeknownst to myself, the journey that would take me to foreign lands, but most of all into the landscape of the imagination.
MY COMMONER OF THE WOOD: MOIRA SWEENY, DIRECTOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER
My first love is my photography and my primary images are trees. My interest in them is the form and the composition and the colouring. I have a few trees that I love. This is one of them, this willow in St Stephen's Green. At sunset, the crown lights up red. Even on a dull day the top of the willow is orange. The grey day heightens it.
I have a real soft spot for this park and what this tree and all the trees in this park must have seen over the years. Going back to the 1600s it was flat grazing pasture for animals in central Dublin. Then it went from that up to the mid-1700s to become a posh hang-out. You had to be a wealthy Dubliner to experience this park. It was first landscaped in the 1750s. Some of these trees would have watched the fashion changes over the centuries. One of the Guinnesses in the 1800s said it should be common land, and he bought it with Lord Ardilaun. That's when it became land for us commoners.
In ancient Irish folklore the trees were divided into different categories. There were the noble trees, like the oaks and the yews, and the second category was the common trees. The willow was one of the commoners of the woods, that's another reason I like it. It is just so elegant. The grace of the curves and the way the wind just moves it. Its branches and twigs are so fine and wispy. I find it mesmerising. Then the catkins come in the spring and it's transformed. Colour comes to it.
The willow is known as the tree of grief. I may not have noticed this willow two years ago, but I would be in fairly profound grief right now. Having said that, in Irish culture it's a tree of fertility. Maybe that's the other reason I'm particularly drawn to it - out of grief comes life.
LIFE'S A BEECH: EITHNE CLARKE, OWNER OF WOODTOWN PARK, CO DUBLIN
My father bought Woodtown Park in 1939. He loved nature and he loved the trees. Every time a tree was felled or fell down he would plant more. So I suppose I've inherited that.
My tree is a beech, it just always intrigued me. I remember going for walks with my mother when I was little. And the great trunk which went up and you could see where the roots came down. There were always little crevices and little niches there. It was as if it was surrounded by little people; something that lived in the tree and made use of the tiny lakes in the roots. I used to run down to this tree to look for little Tom Thumb's pool. And then birds nested in it. A branch would come down, it would start hollowing out and you'd have the crows in there. There was a big hole where a branch used to be. In the winter it would fill with water and you had icicles.
It was like a protector. Once - I think I was about six and I must have been developing measles - my mother wouldn't let me go down, but I escaped. I just huddled up beside that tree. It was the only thing that would look after me.
A big branch came down some years ago, and every couple of years another branch would come down. Then a split came down into the middle of the tree. I went away in early January of last year. I remember going down and hugging that tree, because I knew I wouldn't see it standing again. Within a week of my leaving, a storm came and that was it. It was left with just one spindly little bit. It looked grotesque; it had lost its dignity. That last piece just had to be taken down. But it was a mighty, mighty tree.
Last year I went down the avenue and I saw little seedlings and I potted up the various little beech trees; carrying on the line.
LOOK BUT DON'T TOUCH: ERIC PIERCE, FURNITURE MAKER
I don't hug trees. I've often tried to get it but I don't get the hugging bit. I fell them.
I suppose I'm a monster in that sense. If I pass a sycamore tree I'm more inclined to say "hmmm, fiddle back, perhaps" - that's the back of violins. Similarly with the ash. Its ability to absorb shock lends itself to making hurley sticks. It's such a lovely idea that there's only one tree that can supply you with the hurley.
But this particular tree - in Kilbrittain, Co Cork, is special. It's a small, clipped beech tree in the shape of a mushroom. It's about 200 years old. For years the horses on the farm had their hooves shod under the tree. The shoes were then placed on the branches of the tree, and to this day they are still there. It's the nature of human beings to interfere with nature. That's inevitable. And if we deny it we're never going to be able to go forward. But we can do so in a way that's sensitive. We're the custodians of our natural world. We have to wise up to that.
As a maker of furniture I'm more interested in design and the material and I'm able to separate the two. A tree is a tree is a tree and it's a beautiful thing. But you can make a beautiful violin as well.
This tree must be no more than 18ft high. This is one of the other things that attract me to it. I don't feel at all minute in it, as you can with some trees. I mean I've stood underneath sequoias in California and you feel so small.
MY OAK IS MY PAVILION: MARK PATRICK HEDERMAN, WRITER AND MONK AT GLENSTAL ABBEY
Where I was born there was a most magnificent Turkish oak tree in front of the house. The tree represented everything about the place that I grew up In, like security, something that was always there. The whole family would have picnics under that tree. It was just beside a lake.
I joined Glenstal Abbey in 1963, so when I made profession in 1965, they brought a seedling from that tree, which I planted here, down in the garden by a bridge, beside a stream. To make profession is to
commit yourself to being here.
Later, the original Turkish oak was blown down in a storm. But the seedling has continued to grow. It represents, for me, growth. That a tree is what we are, in fact. That you grow one year at a time. That's
most peoples' lives, that's the way they grow.
That tree would have been for me a symbol of where I came from, of the rootedness. And then coming here was like a transplant. It was quite a different kind of life.
When I came here first I was actually going to leave, and my mother sent me a poem by Francis Thompson which said that you leave your father's tribe and you find the other tribe, which is here, which he calls the red pavilions of my heart. What she was saying was that you really find your own home wherever you establish yourself. And that's symbolised by the tree here. The other tree is gone and this one is growing for 40 years now. It represents what it means to possess your own roots rather than be dependent on somebody else for them.
But it's not exactly saying it doesn't make any difference where you are. It's saying that if you find the place where you should be, where you're going to prosper, where you're going to expand in a way that is freedom, then that's where you should be. That's represented by bringing this tree to this place.