The Four Roots: How Word Forest Grows Forests, Classrooms and Futures
Listen to this article: Although #TreesAreTheKey Awareness Week is over for this year, our work continues. It continues in every sapling that grows, in every classroom we’ve funded, in the work of the Mothers of the Forest, and in the dedication of everyone who has ever donated, shared a post, or simply engaged with our […]
The Generational Forest: What We Plant for Those We’ll Never Meet
Listen to this article: At the age of sixty-five, I have begun to look at the horizon a little differently. I realize that the most important things I have ever done aren’t the ones that bore fruit immediately, but the ones that are still just ‘shoots’: ideas, children, and trees that will only reach their […]
Planting Trees or ‘Planting Trees’: How to Navigate Green Marketing
Listen to this article: Awareness around the complex web of global issues we’re currently facing is growing: from climate change and biodiversity loss to worker exploitation, we are being confronted by a pressing need for change on many scales, across many systems. Despite narratives suggesting otherwise, the overarching response to this information is a demand […]
On Change, Seasons, and the Companionship of Trees
Listen to this article: I’m grateful to say that, as well as a rather grey car park, during the year I spent in hospital, my window looked out onto a large oak tree. When I was first admitted its branches were bare, the first week of a cold April, yet to give way to fresh […]
Mother Tongue, Mother Nature: How Identity, Language and Environmental Knowledge are interlinked
Listen to this article: ‘Kaya’: a fortified settlement whose cultural spaces are indispensable for the enactment of living traditions that underscore the identity, continuity and cohesion of the Mijikenda communities. The Mijikenda is a group of nine Bantu-speaking ethnic groups in the Kaya forests of coastal Kenya, for whom performing arts related to the sacred […]
What We Gain from Giving: the Benefits of Mutualism
Listen to this article: The Limits of an Individualist Worldview Beneath the forest floor there is a complex network of life – fungal threads that weave through the soil and into plant roots, creating a web of connections between organisms. This allows water, nutrients, and chemical messages to flow and resources to be shared, a […]
Plant a Tree, Grow a Story: The Wood Wide Web of Literature
Listen to this article: Even before we discovered that trees communicate through underground fungal and root networks (the so-called ‘wood wide web’), authors were writing about trees not merely as an aesthetic choice, but as the centre of many canonical narratives. They offer shelter, provide comfort, and even become conduits for magic – think of […]
The Long-Term Roots of Change: Reflecting on a Year of Growth
Listen to this article: As I look back on the past twelve months, I realise how much can happen in a year. Some moments were filled with excitement and achievement, while others brought uncertainty, challenges, and deep reflection. Growth, I have learned, is rarely straightforward. It unfolds quietly through everyday experiences, small decisions, and the […]