Celebrating trees in Mayow Park

 

Poster

A cold northerly wind and drizzle which kept people at home rather than out and about in their local green space was not the best day to hold FOMP’s Tree Dressing in Mayow Park on 27^th November 2021.

Despite that some brave volunteers came to put out tables with refreshments, paper leaves, colouring pencils, wax crayons and waterproof pens for writing messages in celebration of the wonderful trees in Mayow Park.

Our volunteers and activity tables

We set up beside one of the veteran boundary oaks so passers-by could see us and participate, to write and hang their comments around the tree for all to read. Below are just a few of the lovely messages.

I love trees

Love and care for trees

Plant more trees

Save all trees

Thank you for the air for us to breathe

May your stories travel far

Trees are important

WHAT IS TREE DRESSING you may ask?
It is based on many old customs from all over the world, celebrated at different times of the year. In England it has become an annual event during the Tree Council National Tree Week (end Nov and into December)

Back in 1990, the charity Common Ground  started this as an annual celebration.

Photo from Common Ground's website

Since then it has grown and provides a chance for communities to gather, to value and to celebrate our leafy friends. It is also a time to reflect on the social and cultural history of the local area and the role trees have played in shaping that story.

Trees have sustained us in many ways:
Food, shelter, medicine and the air we breathe

They have influenced our past and will do so into the future

They have a spiritual significance in many cultures

Celebrating Tree Dressing Day in Mayow Park is a wonderful way of saying 'thank you' and showing our appreciation of the trees where we live.

fun tree dressing event 30th November

With 40 people over the morning - adults and children - we had a great session.
Pippa's tree trail saw families exploring the orchard to find labels with letters to make a sentence.
Messages  to the trees, written on ribbons of fabric or leaf-shaped card, were hung on branches. Refreshments were available, including mulled wine.
The morning ended with singing songs relevant to the event, led by Dave.

Visitors

decorated trees

one decorated tree

singing with Dave

TREE DRESSING DECEMBER 2018

Article by Pippa Moss.

On Saturday 1st December we were faced with a very soggy morning for our tree dressing event and while we couldn’t quite face putting the gazebo up in the rain we didn’t want to cancel.

We would have had to have the storyteller Rich Sylvester in the bowling green huts but the weather actually got a bit better and we found a really sheltered spot near the bowling green with great tree coverage so we just based ourselves right there on the path and Rich made a dry den in the trees. 

Dry den for story telling. Photo Pippa

He did a few story sessions with some groups of all weather families and people did stop to write lovely messages on our fabric strips. Many were inspired by a great tree poem Alona had found with phrases such as ‘stress reliever, shelter for owls etc’. 

Poem found on Internet. Poet unnamed

We ended up dressing the yew tree behind us but also people walked down to the orchard to tie some up there too.

Of course it wasn’t as busy as usual in the park but it felt like we were saying thank you to the trees and that felt right to me - I get a lot from Mayow Park’s trees - there’s many a morning when I return from a rushed school run and look at the trees and just give a big sigh of ‘thanks for being here and looking lovely’. But they look a little less lovely in the winter so dressing them is a good idea!

Some decorative messages. Photo Alona

Tree message. Photo Pippa

Around midday, a talented local dog walker called Dave came along with his guitar and after a few cups of mulled wine it felt very normal to be having a fun sing-along next to the Bowling Green with confused runners trying to dodge through us!

Mulled wine time. Photo Pippa

Dave led a great sing-along on the theme of trees, accompanied by his guitar. He also included Christmas songs   Jingle Bells and White Christmas

                                                                         Photo: Alona

                                                                          Photo: Alona

Singing rounded off our tree dressing event     Photo: Sarah

Alona and I also gave an interview to Emma from CPRE who is filming and interviewing Friends groups. She said it was so nice to chat to people who were so smiley as they talked about their Friends group. I can’t think why on a wet Saturday in a park with a mulled wine inside me and poetic trees words buzzing in my head I wouldn’t be smiling??

TREE-MENDOUS TREES in June

A warm, pleasant evening and over 40 people came on our tree walk round the park on Friday 22nd June at 7pm. We walked round seeking some of the less well-known trees as well as recognising the old, familiar characters. Parkland ornamentals as well as veterans make the trees of Mayow Park so special.
So that children would have a focus  (there were about 8 children there) a sheet with 12 tree names was handed to them. They had to find the trees as we walked round, give the trees a hug or try a bark rubbing, and remember the names of the trees they found. For each tree they received a nature stamp on their sheet.
We came to the black walnut tree Juglans nigra, planted in 1994 by the Friends of Mayow Park (known at that time as Mayow Park Users' group). A non-native tree, it can grow to over 30 metres high. It needs plenty of light and prefers a fertile soil.

Black walnut

Black poplar

Further along the meadow is the black poplar Populas nigra, donated and planted in 2012 by Glendale (the park contractors) to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the Throne. Black poplars can live up to 200 years and this is a native tree. There are other poplars in the park whose age we can only guess at and there was some debate about whether they had been planted before Mayow Park was created.
 

Majestic Cedar of Lebanon

The majestic evergreen Cedar of Lebanon, originating from Lebanon and the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, stands proudly looking down hill from its vantage point near the De Frene Road entrance.
We found Monkey Puzzle trees and lovely limes, a golden weeping willow and strong hornbeams.

A holm oak which has been a popular climbing tree through the generations. People now in their 40s and 50s bring their own children back to the park to share memories of this tree.
Horse chestnut is still a popular tree in autumn when children gather its conkers. How many can you find in the park?
Plenty of maples were planted in the park in the past, along the path edges.  Some have thrown up suckers and look more like maple bushes than trees. One has formed a den much loved by young children.

Maple den

We must not forget the wonderful veteran English oaks, Quercus robur, many of which were pollarded in bygone days. These are all older than the park and may have once been part of field boundary hedgerows. They are affectionately known as the boundary oaks.  This park has more than 20 such trees. Very old trees like these are valuable for wildlife. They contain dead wood particularly good for many beetles whose larvae feed on dead wood.  Holes also make good homes for nesting birds and small mammals.

One of the wonderful pollarded oaks

A copper beech, a blue cedar, a tulip tree and a tall Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostrboides, are some of the other specials in the park. To appreciate the dawn redwood in all its glory it is worth getting close up, to see the bark and the leaves. This is a deciduous conifer, shedding its leaves every autumn.

Dawn Redwood 

Celebrating Trees on 2nd December

A year ago, in December 2016, Friends of Mayow Park held our first Tree Dressing Day in the community orchard, an opportunity to celebrate how the orchard has developed with the help of so many volunteers. We had such fun then and the committee wanted to hold the event again this year. We were anxious about the weather but after a light drizzle the rain held off for the rest of the morning.

A team of volunteers gathered at the orchard to put up our gazebo, unfurl our banner, check we had enough fabrics, paper, pens, pencils and crayons, wool, ribbons and string plus apple juice, tea, coffee and hot water. Our story teller, Rich Sylvester, arrived and set up his area under the protective branches of a lime tree.

Rich prepares for story telling

By 10am we were ready to welcome visitors.

Visitors welcomed to our gazebo

But why hold this event? Tree Dressing is based on many old customs from all over the world, celebrated at different times of the year.

Tree Dressing Day in England falls on the first weekend of December every year. It was initiated by the charity Common Ground in 1990 and has grown to become a chance for the whole community to gather and celebrate the leafy friends we all have in common. It is also a chance for communities to reflect on the social and cultural history of their local area, and the role that trees have played in shaping that story. 

Trees have provided our sustenance, food, shelter, medicine and the air we breathe. They are part of our history and also our future. Trees have long been celebrated for their spiritual significance. It can be as simple as tying strips of cloth or yarn to a tree. The practice in Japan is to decorate trees with strips of white paper, or tanzaku, bearing wishes or poetry. 

Borrowing from these many traditions, our Tree Dressing included paper leaves for people to write messages or draw pictures to give to the trees, tie coloured strips of fabric (with or without messages) or make objects to hang in the trees.

Dream catcher

Our story teller captured the imagination of young and old with his stories and showed how to make dream catchers to add to the decorative creativity that was transforming our orchard.

creative decorations

More creative decorations

We finished off the morning with rousing winter songs led by our two wonderful singers Lucy and Valerie, and some mulled wine with thanks to Valerie and Robert.

There are so many thank yous: thank you to all those who visited our event, the lovely children and families who joined in the story telling. Thank you to our story teller Rich. Thank you to all the volunteers who contributed so much of their time. 

Celebrating Tree Dressing in our community orchard was a wonderful way to show our appreciation  of trees in our locality and to share tree stories with everyone who joined us.

Tree dressing photos 3 - group pictures

This is the last set of photos from our Tree Dressing event in Mayow Park on Sunday 4th December 2016. They were taken by Simon, a photographer working for Helping Britain Blossom who support The Orchard Project.http://helpingbritainblossom.org.uk
If you use any of these photos please acknowledge Helping Britain Blossom.

group photo 1

group photo 2

tree with ribbons

sing along at the end of the morning