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Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘They're like humans': Why we grieve the loss of a special tree
This is a fairy tale about trees. It has good knights and shadowy rogues and great gnarly oaks and elms of Olde England. But it is a modern story, so there's also conceptual art, existential environmental angst, and, of course, the double-edged sword of social media. My search for the source of our national obsession with trees begins in the North of England, under the noisy kittiwakes of Tyne Bridge, as two men go into the dock at Newcastle Crown Court. The trial of Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, the two men accused of felling the Sycamore Gap tree – an historic landmark of northern England – was set to be a spectacle. These unlikely criminal masterminds had triggered the rage of a nation. I attended the first two days of the trial, as the jury was selected and sworn in and the prosecution opened its case – with Richard Wright KC railing against the pair's 'moronic mission' to fell the 200-year-old sycamore next to Hadrian's Wall in 2023 – and couldn't help feeling that the whole affair was rather sad and surreal. Here were two individuals, found guilty a fortnight later, that might face jail time when they are sentenced in July. It would be the first time anyone has received a custodial sentence in Britain for tree felling. But, of course, this was no ordinary tree, this was a symbol. But of what? Locals in Newcastle had plenty to say about the case, but only on assurance of anonymity. That tree is a tricky subject about which to sit on the fence. Film of the felling was shown, and the judge repeatedly counselled jury members to recuse themselves if they felt too emotionally distraught. The man next to me in the public gallery told me he had proposed to his wife at Sycamore Gap. Credit: Crown Prosecution Service Media But outside of the courtroom, responses were nuanced. 'Locals hardly thought about the tree until it was gone,' said one man, adding that they only got angry when others got angry on X and Facebook. One Newcastle business owner thought that the response was absurd. 'We need to keep it in perspective. It's had more press than the murder of a local teenage girl,' she claimed. 'But I don't want a brick through my window for being a tree hater.' Tree haters and tree huggers: have trees now become another part of our polarised discourse? Could there be an element of virtue signalling to this outpouring of grief? 'Tree people are good people,' observes artist Nancy Cadogan whose Lost Trees series of paintings (which go on view at the Garden Museum in London this June), memorialise some 20 felled trees. The last in the series features Sycamore Gap. 'This project started to germinate back in 2022 as a result of HS2 felling trees within my area. I was struck by an extraordinary intensity of emotion and grief surrounding the felling of the trees, and a feeling of powerlessness that accompanied this,' says Cadogan. 'I then realised that the felling of trees affects people in communities around the country, in both urban and rural areas and wanted to explore the effects of that in my work.' The result is a series of stylised and elegiac landscapes. Cadogan's project is just one of several current art projects that highlight the importance of our trees. But it was ever thus. It seems that our emotional attachment to trees is firmly rooted in Britain's cultural output: trees feature in our poetry, prose and television shows. They provide the scaffolding to the verse of Shakespeare, Hardy, Larkin and Longfellow and stand proud in the paintings of Constable, Turner and Palmer. The villains in this arboreal fairy tale fit into three camps. There are the 'morons' like Graham and Carruthers, who cut down trees on a whim or a grudge. Then there are councils who, some critics claim, are chopping down trees at the same rate they are monetising – and littering – our pavements with forests of e-bikes. Finally, there is the classic malefactor: the greedy property developer. Historically, cutting down trees was an act of war. Caesar destroyed the sacred oaks of the Druids and, in more recent times, Israeli settlers have targeted Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank. 'It has reached a crescendo,' stated a spokesperson for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation in 2010. 'What might look like ad hoc violence is actually a tool the settlers are using to push back Palestinian farmers from their own land.' Today, in Britain, the motives behind tree vandalism are often unclear. Having pleaded not guilty, Graham and Carruthers failed to explain their actions. Similarly, the felling by the Toby Carvery restaurant chain of a 500-year-old oak at Whitewebbs Park in Enfield this spring has left everyone confused. Was the tree dead, as Toby Carvery has claimed, or alive as the council insists? Investigations continue. While cutting down any unsightly, unwanted or inconveniently-placed tree is unlikely to see you in a Crown Court, the Northumberland sycamore was exceptional. Not only well known, and eminently photogenic – Instagrammable, we might say – it was supposedly worth the extraordinarily specific sum of £622,191. It was valued using the Capital Asset Value for Amenity Trees (CAVAT) system, which is the recognised methodology for assigning a monetary figure to a tree in a public space. (It is distinct from Tree Preservation Orders, or TPOs, which are often cited in development disputes.) The metrics by which CAVAT arrives at its magic number are, arguably, somewhat subjective. A tree is judged on its health, age, crown size and, less scientifically quantifiable, its contribution to public welfare. The most expensive tree in Britain is in Berkeley Square – known as the Berkeley Plane – with a reported value of £750,000. A tree's fame, location and owner all play a part. It's a class system for trees and the truth is that we value some more than others. To address this disparity, the Woodland Trust launched a Charter for Trees, Woods and People in 2017. Some 70 organisations and 300 community groups collected more than 60,000 stories, delving into what people love about their local trees. From these, a set of principles was formed, including planting for the future, making trees accessible to all and protecting irreplaceable specimens. While the Woodland Trust, along with the National Trust and English Heritage, does much to educate the public about the beauty and wellbeing of the nation's woodland there is also the Downton Abbey factor. Downton did for towering oaks what Eastenders does for cockney pubs. Heritage television broadcasts sweeping vistas of sculpted parks and arboretums into our living rooms. Location scouts seek out atmospheric forests, coppices and thickets: they provide the perfect backdrop for moody meetings and passionate trysts. And their moment in the limelight – the Sycamore Gap's cameo in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is another example – is well deserved and telling: the stately homes of Britain are the custodians of much of the nation's ancient woodland. 'I recognise how important trees are to everyone's existence,' says Dave Cullum, the parks and gardens manager for Boughton Estate in Northamptonshire, seat of the 10th Duke of Buccleuch. Cullum is responsible for the 'pretty stuff' surrounding the house – nicknamed 'The English Versailles' – including most of the 'veteran' trees and a network of tree-lined avenues that link to some 2,500 acres of woodland. The avenues have been devastated by Dutch elm disease, but Cullum is gradually reintroducing elms, as well as planting poplars and lime trees. The estate's trees are much loved by the Montagu family, who have owned the property since the 17th century. 'They're amazing custodians,' says Cullum. 'If it were purely financial, you'd probably not provide the care that we give to some of the trees; you'd probably just cut the tree down and start again. But we obviously recognise the importance of maintaining that backbone. They harbour everything – memory and ecology – they connect to each other.' The Boughton estate works with the Rural Crime Team, a dedicated section of the British police force, as well as government bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, to safeguard the trees and other elements of the landscape. So, does Cullum have his favourite trees on the estate? 'There are some, but don't tell the others. In particular, we have a fantastic oak that sits in an area we call Weekley Park. Not only does it carry great age, it has a magnificent crown structure. It defines itself.' Cullum also likes a small, knotty field maple – 'almost a hollow stem' – that sits quietly at the edge of the garden. 'No one really takes it in, but it has its own merit,' he says. And there are many more. 'I've been here for 22 years and I couldn't leave them. That's how it becomes, it gets you. You become a little bit like one of the elves from Lord of the Rings.' Of course, Britain is not alone in its love of trees. 'In every country there should be laws that protect trees,' says Giuseppe Penone, the Italian conceptual artist whose tree-related retrospective, Thoughts in the Roots, is on view at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Penone says we should take a leaf out of The White Goddess, Robert Graves' famous book on myth-making: 'He says that the decadence of humanity began when the penalty for cutting down a tree was no longer capital punishment.' For half a century, Penone has created sculptures and installations that riff on the fluidity of trees, an obsession dating back to his youth growing up in the mountains of Italy. 'I remember a hollow thousand-year-old chestnut tree, which you could access from a small opening and several children could fit inside,' he tells me. 'It was a constant stimulus for the imagination of our games.' Penone's show coincides with the inauguration of the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, A Capsule in Time, by the Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, which features a semi-mature Ginkgo tree at its heart. The gallery has security in place to contend with vandals. In Nordic countries, trees are a part of daily life. Disagreements about trees are the most common conflict between neighbours in Norway, observes Lars Mytting, the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood: The guide to chopping, stacking and drying wood the Scandinavian way. 'We have several rules that try to lower the tension, but they come up very often. One of the rules is that if a third of your tree could fall onto the neighbour's ground if felled, you can be forced to cut the top of the tree.' Mytting visited Sycamore Gap during an author tour to a bookshop in Corbridge. 'The felling must be one of the crudest, most stupid and culturally sadistic acts I ever have heard about,' he tells me. 'I guess we are so connected to trees because they are a bit like humans – alive, individual, stout but also fragile – and because they can outlive us by many generations.' Scandinavians largely consider trees as agricultural features rather than emotional trigger points. 'However, one tree of great significance was the 'Royal Birch' in Molde on the west coast of Norway, where a famous photo was taken of King Haakon and Prince Olav in 1940 before they went on the ship to London. That became an emblem of our wartime resistance. But, in 1981, stupid vandals almost managed to cut it down and the tree did not survive.' A new birch was planted by King Olav in 1982, Mytting tells me, but that later fell during a storm. 'And so we planted another, which is still there,' says Mytting. 'I guess you have to do the same with the Sycamore Gap Tree. It may be another tree but it will still be the Sycamore Gap Tree.' All fairy tales need sages. Enter, from woodland right, two of our national treasures. In 2017, Dame Judi Dench explained her adoration of trees in a BBC documentary. 'My life now is trees and Champagne,' she said. Michael Morpurgo, the beloved author of War Horse, is equally enamoured. In 2023, Morpurgo published My Heart Was a Tree, a collection of tree-related poems and stories. 'Every day that I can, I go for a walk in the bluebell woods behind our house,' he writes in the introduction. 'I know every one of the trees I pass. They hear me coming, they listen to me. I listen to them, to the whisper of them, the roaring of them, the creaking of them.' At his house in the heart of Devon, Morpurgo takes me on a tour of the trees in his garden: vigorous camellias, a mulberry, a large Bramley apple tree. Over their canopies, one can see the crest of Dartmoor. 'We notice them more than any other flower, they're always there,' Morpurgo says. 'They age like us, they wrinkle like us, they fall to pieces like us.' In the mid-1970s, Michael and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children, a charity based in a local Victorian manor and a nearby farm, which introduces youngsters from urban environments to country ways. 'We've done a lot of planting of trees down on the farm. It's a work task which we've indulged in for the last 50 years when the kids come down,' says Morpurgo. 'Because we want them to feel that what they do will live on.' Morpurgo's friend and Devon neighbour, the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, equated trees with kin in his poem My Own True Family. The poem delivers a warning from the trees themselves: Hughes' theme of nature's reproach proved prophetic. Trees have become a totem for issues surrounding the climate crisis. They are often seen as the answer. 'Trees change everything,' says MIT Professor Sheila Kennedy, whose TREE FORM project is showcased at this year's Venice Biennale of Architecture. It proposes the use of branching tree forks in the building industry rather than relying on carbon-intensive materials, in the same way that chefs champion 'whole animal butchery'. A composition of branching trees, says Kennedy, 'can create new spaces for working, gathering and living that benefit people, forests and the spaces that each inhabits.' Kennedy also suggests that living trees might one day be incorporated into the structure of buildings, where they could provide 'oxygen, shade, wellness and inspiration, if they have generous access to sunlight, soil and water,' she says. 'There's a long history of using trees to support building structures, so it's fascinating to imagine an architecture of living trees and maybe one that cooperates with sustainable harvested branching trees.' There is a view that trees are becoming secular icons of worship. 'I think they always have been,' says Morpurgo. 'It's interesting how we get taken back to our earlier times. Down here there is a great tradition of carvings in churches of the Green Man [a pagan tree person and symbol of fertility which also appeared on the invitation to King Charles' coronation]. It's a growing person and a tree talking together and becoming one. It's the whole business of our shared life on this planet. Trees are an emblem for that. In a way, they've been the polar bear or the elephant of how we see our local nature.' A seismic, but much needed, shift has occurred in attitudes towards trees, says Morpurgo. 'That all trees are doing some good to us on this planet has been a late realisation amongst us all.' And perhaps that recognition – one that requires constant reinforcement – is as close as we will get to a fairy tale ending to this story. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Times
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The best artists' gardens to visit, from Cecil Beaton to Claude Monet
Cecil Beaton wore many outlandish hats in his time. He was a photographer of high society, including royalty, as well as war. He designed sets and costumes for theatre, ballet and film. He was a writer, illustrator, painter and interior designer. He was decadent, boho, astute, difficult and brilliant. But can you really see him weeding? Well, welcome to my rose-laden arbour, as he might have said. A new exhibition at the Garden Museum in London is the first to give us Beaton the gardener — in a still stylish straw gardening hat (on display). He's out in the midday sun, if not weeding and planting, then dreaming up extravagant beds of flowers of all sizes and colours, although his favourites were white. Cecil Beaton's
Forbes
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Eight Jewelry Exhibitions To See This Spring
Fern earrings from the Wild Botany collection which accompanies the jeweler's Into the Wild ... More exhibition, currently at the Garden Museum, London. From Cartier in London to Melanie Eddy in Bermuda, via Hannah Martin at Sotheby's Hong Kong and the Diane Venet collection in Florida, these are the jewelry shows to see right now. Hazel, Briar Rose, Chestnut in Silver, Alex Monroe for the Garden Museum The jeweler Alex Monroe presents his first solo show of art and objects at this hidden gem of a London museum, exploring the connection between Nature and creativity. Silver buttercups, cow parsley and strawberry leaves fill a vase, while branches of apple blossom and Scots pine shed petals and pines, like a Dutch still life in precious metal. Through five floral sculptures, each representing an endangered UK natural habitats created with the designer Hazel Gardiner, Monroe explores the life cycle of death and renewal, and encourages viewers to reflect on how they interact with nature and the role they themselves can play in conservation. From sketches and drawings, to hand-thrown vases and a 20-piece capsule collection inspired by the theme of the exhibition, the pieces showcase the creative talent that underpins his work as a jeweler inspired by the fields and forests of his childhood. Alex Monroe: Into the Wild is at The Garden Museum, London; May 1 - June 1. Three silver bangles by Melanie Eddy, on show at the Bermuda National Gallery There's still time to catch Melanie Eddy's first retrospective, and it's on home soil for the native Bermudan, at Hamilton's Bermuda National Gallery. Now based in London, Eddy's distinctive geometric jewels have a cult collectorship, and with two shows at Sotheby's and a commission from the V&A Museum under her belt, and the show demonstrates how deeply inspired the goldsmith still is by her homeland after 20 years living abroad. The exhibition explores the island's influences on her work, including the vernacular architecture, the triangular sails of the Bermuda rig, and the stark shadows produced by bright sunlight, through key collections that chart the development of her sculptural style over 20 years from geometry in silver through to the high jewelry she created for the Brilliant & Black exhibition in 2022. New for the show, is the Breakers collection, which uses gentler, more rounded forms to capture a period of personal grief through an exploration of the swirling currents around her island home. 'The work references the crest of rolling waves, the breaker reefs, breaking waves and ocean swells. It's about the things that threaten to break us, the rules we break and the things that crash and break upon us. Like rocks, or shards of glass worn smooth by water over time, we're still made of the same stuff, but visibly altered, the same but also different somehow and softer.' Meditations on Form: Jewellery by Melanie Eddy is at Bermuda National Gallery, City Hall & Arts Centre in Hamilton, Bermuda; until May 31. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Bandeau in Tutti Frutti style, English Art Works for Cartier London, 1928. Emeralds, rubies, ... More sapphires, diamonds and platinum, currently on show at the Cartier exhibition at the V&A Museum, London. Curated by Helen Molesworth and Rachel Garrahan, this comprehensive exhibition shows how the Cartier founder's grandsons set out to make the Place Vendôme jewelry house and household name. They succeeded, and more; and the show features over 350 items going back to the turn of the 20th century including the Williamson Diamond brooch commissioned by Queen Elizabeth, Grace Kelly's engagement ring and a broad selection of Cartier's emblematic panther jewels. 'Cartier is one of the most famous jewelry houses in the world. This exhibition will explore how Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier, together with their father Alfred, adopted a strategy of original design, exceptional craftsmanship and international expansion that transformed the Parisian family jeweler into a household name,' say the curators. 'With its world-class jewelry collection, the V&A is the perfect stage to celebrate the pioneering achievements of Cartier and its transformational ability to remain at the centre of culture and creativity for more than a century.' Move fast, as it's selling out quickly. Cartier is at the V&A South Kensington, April 12th - November 16th. Rings by Jilian Maddin, on show at the LOVE Ring exhibition, at Tomfoolery London London's Tomfoolery gallery is one of the city's stand-out jewelry destinations. In leafy Muswell Hill, it's currently showing the annual Love Ring exhibition, a curation of contemporary commitment rings by gallery owner Laura Kay, which this year, comes with a focus on genderless ring designs. 'There's a clear contrast coming through this year between bold, expressive maximalism and more refined minimalism—both are strong in their own right. Green sapphires remain popular, and we're also seeing a rise in bright whites, particularly lab-grown stones, which are becoming a standard choice, especially in larger pieces,' she says. 'It's been great to see such a strong focus on colour and some really thoughtful work from new designers.' With new designers this year including Jilian Maddin and her exquisite engraved portrait rings, plus an exclusive lab-grown diamond ring capsule collection from Ellis Mhairi Cameron and a preloved curation, it's a must-see if you're in the city. A snapshot of the current landscape for modern wedding, engagement and union bands from some of the hottest international designers around. Love Ring will be on at Tomfoolery, 109 Fortis Green Road, Muswell Hill, London, N10 3HP, England; until June 28. Razor ring, gold and sapphire, by Hannah Martin and Guy Berryman, currently on show at Sotheby's ... More Hong Kong. Sotheby's Maison exhibition space is hosting an exhibitions of the work of London-based goldsmith Hannah Martin this month, including A Vanitas Stoned, a new stream in her collaboration with Coldplay bassist Guy Berryman. Alongside other emblematic Hannah Martin pieces like the gold mesh Liquid Harness Chain and the Delirium Trance Amulet, the new pieces include gold razor blade rings and dog tag necklaces studded with sapphires, in a meditation on the fleeting beauty and fragility of life inspired by the Dutch vanitas tradition. The pair met on a flight to Los Angeles, when Martin spotted Berryman wearing an earring she had designed years previously and combined forces on the original line, released in 2023. 'With a vision to infuse heirlooms with defiance, I aim to craft pieces that are historically rooted yet rebellious - fresh and charged with contemporary spirit. When Guy and I began this creative journey, we sought to create objects that not only adorn but also ignite conversations about the beauty of seizing the moment,' says Martin. A Vanitas Stoned Collection by Hannah Martin, is the The Salon, Sotheby's Maison, &/F, Landmark Chater, 8, Connaught Road Central, Central, Hong Kong; April — May. A pearl necklace on show in the Exhibition Pearls in Paris, at L'Ecole des Arts Joailliers, Paris. Art and fashion meet history at this exhibition at the new L'Ecole School of Jewellery Arts in Paris, supported by Van Cleef & Arpels. Paris, City of Pearls explores a mainstay of luxury jewellery that became emblematic of parisian style itself, thanks to trade in pearls between the Gulf region and France between the 1860s and 1930s. Their arrival on Place Vendôme would spark a craze for layering long strings of pearls known as sautoirs, à la Coco Chanel, and the gemstone from the sea is still seen as having a quintessentially Paris look today. Don't miss L'Ecole's library and reading rooms while you're there. Paris, City of Pearls is at L'Ecole des Arts Joailliers, Hôtel de Mercy-Argenteau, 16 bis boulevard Montmartre, 75009 Paris, France; until June 1, 2025. PABLO PICASSO (Spanish, 1881 – 1973) Le Grand Faune , 1973 Pendant 23 - k arat gold Edition 3 of 20 ... More 3 3/8 x 4 3/4 in. (8.5 x 12 cm) Diane Venet Collection For 40 years, Diane Venet has had an all-access pass to the art world, born into a family of collectors, then traveling the world with her artist husband Bernard Venet for shows and exhibitions. During that time, she has amassed an impressive collection of artist jewelry, described as 'second to none' by Ghislain d'Humières, Kenneth C. Griffin Director and CEO of the Norton Collection, which is currently hosting an exhibition of over 150 of her jewels. Many of which are displayed alongside paintings and sculptures by the same artists from the Norton archive, and some were commissioned especially for the show. 'The story of this collection is largely that of my friendships in the art world over the past forty years,' said Venet. 'In my rather itinerant life, this collection of jewelry is thus an intimate museum that I can take everywhere with me and the treasure trove which I can find on my return home.' Make sure you see Man Ray's Optic Topic (1974), and Picasso's Le Grand Faune necklace (1973). Artists' Jewelry: from Cubism to Pop, the Diane Venet Collection opens April 12th – October 5th at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. A drawing of an Egyptian scarab brooch, Pierre-Georges Deraisme, (c. 1905). Graphite pencil, ink and ... More gouaché on paper currently on show at the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. A donation of Monsieur and Madame Martin L'Ébranly, 2001. Often overlooked by its famous counterpart over the road — the Grand Palais, home of Chanel runway shows and blockbuster exhibitions — the Petit Palais is a delightful art museum with a substantial house collection. This season, its shining the spotlight on the art of jewelry drawing with a comprehensive curation of drawings and jewels from the museum's 5,500-strong collection. With a focus on the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, the show bears witness to the evolution of styles and progress in technique through graphic art, lifting the lid on the design process and celebrating the precise art of gouaché. Don't miss the Art Nouveau and Art Deco drawings, plus the final room, which shows jewels like George Fouquet's Sycamore pendant (1910), next to their exquisite drawings. Jewelry Drawing, Secrets of Creation is at the Petit Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 Paris, France; until July 20.
