"anyone want a Yew sapling"

A neighbour of mine, knowing that I was interested in all things green, e-mailed me the other day and said, "do you want some Holly seedlings that the birds have 'planted' in my back garden?" As I'm the chair of a local conservation group she thought that we might want to plant the seedlings "over the Meadows". "The Meadows" is one of our local green spaces. Once it was comprised of species-rich flood meadows - but is now a rather dull plantation of 'native trees' (must be good, then!) with small patches of grassland increasingly overrun with scrub.

When I next bumped into this person, in the street, I explained that if you rooted about in the shade of the dull plantation there were thousands of Holly seedlings already. I theorised that Holly was probably once more common locally but for generations local farmers had fed it to sheep, and other livestock, in winter (In spite of Holly's prickliness, livestock will eat it and Oliver Rackham has called it, "iron rations for sheep"). It is relatively slow growing and may be only now beginning to make a comeback after hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years of cutting. I suggested to this lady that in 100 years our whole area could be one vast 'Holly wood'. She looked at me with a look of blank incomprehension - as though I was completely mad and had spoken to her in ancient Aramaic - much the same look as you've probably got on your face now, if you've bothered to read this far!

Oh yes, CS for approx. every 10 Holly seedlings there is a Yew seedling.

I still insist that my local environment is endlessly fascinating and complex - and I'm sure yours is too. My environment needs to be CONSERVED. My dictionary defines the word 'conserve' as to "keep from harm or loss" it says absolutely nothing about arbitrarily adding new things. I continue to believe that tree planting is not necessary and usually does more harm than good! Oliver Rackham (him again!) says that: "Tree planting is not synonymous with conservation; it is a sign that conservation has failed". Before you start getting all enthusiastic about tree planting try reading Rackham's book, 'Woodlands' (2006) - which is Vol. 100 in the Collins New Naturalist series.