A headline in a recent Times of London was: The Man Who Hated Trees. In fact it was "Batchelor who hated trees", for that was his name. But when you read it, you could see that his point was, rather, that he felt he had better use to make of his land, i.e. in growing wheat and other edible crops. In 28 years Mr Batchelor felled tens of thousands of trees, went twice to prison for his deeds, ignored huge fines and the spells of imprisonment, and drove on, felling trees and rooting out tens of miles of hedges, according to this account. He went bust, and now an organisation called The Woodlands Trust, with £1 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund is starting out, next year, to replant 598 acres of his former land.
There will be 200,000 trees and in 20 years there should be forest again. All this on the Kentish Downs. No one in Ireland, surely, could be allowed to fell trees so sweepingly without permission. But there are people with doubts about the national urge to return Ireland to something like its former woodland status. This concept of the early days of national revival has been promoted with a somewhat on-off rhythm by various Governments, but is now going at a steady pace. Forestry is conspicuously among major national aims.
Time goes on, and some frustrations and doubts appear. In a very good TV programme this week Vincent Woods, playwright, came back to his native Leitrim and found the good - employment, with some young people returning from abroad for jobs in the new factory. There's always another side. Some worry about the effect on the quality of water in the Shannon. And often the impression was that the people of Leitrim, as elsewhere, are simply uneasy as the old backdrop of small fields and water, in which they have grown up, is changing around them and will continue to do so. Just unease in the face of the comparatively unknown.
Women, in particular, who perhaps spend so much time in the farm home, dislike the idea of trees hemming in their accustomed view and darkening the prospect, even when trees do not come up too near the house. In the city, it is surprising how many people dislike trees: "leaves drop and make pavements slippy and dangerous"; "you have to rake up other people's leaves in your garden." Yet, planting will go on. And on. We need it.