Deeply affected by the demise of many of the UK’s elm trees in the 1970s, novelist Sheila Jeffries pledged that on each birthday she would plant a tree seed for each year of her life. Over the years that have followed, she has joyfully raised many specimens. Sheila, whose rural Somerset garden is full of pots containing foraged beechnuts, walnuts, acorns and more, says: ‘My first experience of growing a tree was when I picked up a shiny conker I found in a city park. I still recall my sense of wonder as I watched it germinate and grow.’
It’s this fascination, interwoven with concern for loss of habitat, that motivated Sheila and her husband Ted to plant a ‘forest of dreams’ on a 50-acre site in Cornwall. Over the course of 10 years, and with just two spades, a wheelbarrow and a collection of saplings grown from gathered seeds, they have nurtured this plantation to create a precious, young forest.