A Love of Trees
I have always loved trees. From the age of five when looking out of our front room onto the two giant horse chestnuts on the other side of the drive and wondering why one produced conkers and the other did not, I have always found trees fascinating and magnificent. I have loved to climb them, to play around them, pollard and prune them and to try to grow them from acorns and conkers.
As the son of shipwright who built elegant and timeless modern furniture in oak, I loved the texture and colour of oak where I sat for breakfast every day. I also remember reading of Lord Collingwood, second in command to Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, and his habit of planting acorns as he made his daily constitutional in order to furnish the means of building ships for the Navy at the rate of 2-3,000 trees per ship.
As a young married man, I remember visiting the Tollemache estate at Helmingham Hall in Suffolk and pocketing a handful of acorns falling from the magnificent oaks there and planting them at home. They took root and after two or three trans-plantings have thrived at our current home in East Yorkshire and matured to the extent that they too have generated acorns of their own. Then there are the oaks grown from the acorns collected while walking in the weald of Kent after a gathering of my mother’s family and they always bring her to mind as I visit to inspect them.
It is some of these trees that I have transplanted to the site at Grotech where the soil, I feel, is less than perfect for their survival. However, it remains my ambition to both see them survive to produce their own acorns and to develop an aid to the propagation and survival of all trees. Grotech has both the experience and the contacts to make this latter goal a realistic one for the coming year or two. Meanwhile I’m hoping to see that the second generation grown from the trees at home get well established and maybe construct a tree-house on the parent tree for the benefit of our grandchildren and the young family who are due to move in next door. This and building a boat that incorporates a piece of HMS Victory should see me on the way into retirement, I’ve just got a few more acorns to plant!
Martin Usher
Managing Director
