The theme for National Tree Week 2024 is "Trees in our cities: 10 reasons we need to plant more". Now the area where we live, in Earley and Lower Earley, are definitely not within a city, but they are part of the urban sprawl between London and Reading. In fact Lower Earley was (one of) the largest housing developments in Europe when it was built in the 1980s but it was built with a lot of green space, a nature reserve in the centre and a lot of trees, ancient and new. This greenery was one of the things which attracted us to move into our house.
You might not know but I lead Oakwood Forest Church in the local nature reserve for many years and loved finding God in and amongst the trees, including the ancient oaks which date back many hundreds of years. After my disability meant I could no longer get that close to these trees, I started painting them as a way of remembering them. I must have painted over a dozen of my favourite trees using their trunk and branch forms as the structures and then painting rainbow colours to celebrate their beauty.
Earlier this year the Wokingham District Veteran Tree Association approached the Wokingham Art Society, of which I am an exhibiting member, asking if anyone had created art about any of the trees on their tree survey register.
I have to admit that I didn't realise there was a formal register of trees in the borough, but was thrilled to find that 8 of the trees I had painted were listed in the register. Even more interestingly, the details of these trees from the 2024 survey were provided on their website. I sent an email with my paintings of these 8 trees thinking that one or two might be of interest to the tree wardens.
This week I heard that at least one of my paintings was to be featured in the WDVTA website. Then today you can imagine my surprise and happiness, when the link went live and I found all 8 of my paintings featured on their website with information about why and how I painted them.
As you can see in the screenshot above, each of my paintings links to information about the tree I painted. So rather than share the paintings here I'm encouraging you to visit the WDVTA Website Art Gallery and see them there, find out more about the trees and enjoy the art that other people have created about trees they love.
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If you want to see more of my tree paintings and poems you might like to visit my post for last year's National Tree Week.
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