Tree Planting Poem

Plant a tree in ‘73

Plant some more in ‘74

Barely alive in ‘75

Dead as sticks in ’76 - (and this was the drought year)

All gone to heaven in ‘77

It’s just too late in ‘78

This poem was coined by a friend of Jilly’s who had promoted a tree-planting programme amongst East Anglian farmers and landowners in the 1970s. Unfortunately, none of them knew a thing about arboriculture - they grew grass around the roots of the trees, and under-watered them, for example - and so the trees all died. Farmers had often chosen to plant them in highly prominent areas (such as at the entrance to their farms) as a prestige crop, so the trees became a highly visible reminder of personal failure. The experience of this was enough to discourage farmers from more tree planting for the next 14 years.