"What did you do for the Millennium, Daddy?" We in Ireland will not be taking part in a proposal which has come from the University of
Greenwich, known as the Millennium Tree Line. This hopes to establish along the Greenwich Meridian a line of trees which will run for 320
kilometres through England before continuing through France, Spain and West Africa. The English magazine Landscape Design contains an article by Catherine Freeman, who also manages the project. Most common response, she writes, is: "Why". Why a single line of trees?
Is it a landscape feature, monument, living sculpture - or just a folly?
Well, the line does mark the Greenwich Meridian, from which time is determined, she writes, and from which all navigation is measured.
And though Greenwich itself is no more than a point on the line, it draws attention to the fact that each day begins and ends here (!).
And the project would mark mankind's move from one era to another. No one who sees the turn of the Millennium will live to see the next.
But some trees will, if the project goes ahead. Yews, for example.
And the writer notes that if some deciduous trees are pollarded or coppiced, they could last for more than a thousand years. With constant care.
There will be no single owner, but the line will become "an intrinsic part of each community through which it passes." It will belong to everyone who has participated and maintained it. If the project goes ahead, how many will say "not in my back garden, thanks"?
But it's a bold thought. The leaders of the project realise that there are special problems in parts of Africa, where trees have to be cut to keep families alive. And trees already growing along the line of longitude will be recorded, and the owners will be encouraged to preserve them. The author and manager of the project has many other thoughts, and a vision that, as the line grows, "it is anticipated that it will become visible from the air, and perhaps, as with the
Great Wall of China, be visible from space, marking the boundaries between the eastern and western hemispheres."
A bold thought as was said before. Endlessly subject to objections and complications. But a good try - at the very least. What will we in Ireland do?