An artist, Ben Quail, rocked up at the wood, with his car full of a ‘ton of hope’. Hundreds of oak saplings he had collected, and nurtured over some time in various containers, held by Lowestoft earth.
Here is Ben’s email:
Dear Rachel thanks for your kind offer
If you nurture them They will grow in medium size pots and can then be planted out in autumn properly when they will have winter to put down roots. This is for me a culmination of a several year process of nursery production of trees from seed
This project started for me in 2020 when I studied tree s for mental health at MA studies in Lincoln
I sense you are a good forest steward for suffolk
I am very interested in the idea of turning the nursery production of tree seeds into a new suffolk forest pathway process
As a model for the future for trees and landscape
I hope to write down what I have done and hope you will too as a diary for education and promotion of
Ton of hope Project
I first met Ben Quail, tree grower, on email. He responded to my mailout about the Immigration conversation, to the local Green Party supporters. He did not come, but I sent him the notes. He asked: Do you know anyone who would like some tiny saplings I have hundred s in small pots oaks
He rocked up at the close of a day, his motor full of oaks, 100 plus he said.
He’d collected the acorns from various places, learned how to propagate through trial and error. By one of those over lapping venn diagrams of life, he’d been teaching a screen printing course that day, with Joe Soloman’s sister.
He returned a few days later with a further 100, and gave this story as he sat in the rocking chair and sketched.
