Christmas is a time to reflect on loss, take stock and look forward

Peter Dowdall reflects on the life cycle of trees in nature and uses it as a metaphor for life, loss and renewal.

Every garden has a tree. A tree to anchor the garden, to act as the central fulcrum around which the rest of the elements work.

This tree is vital in the garden, cleaning the air from dangerous pollutants, buffering noise and other environmental influences and standing firm in times of storm and high winds, resilient and unmoving.

This tree represents security, permanence, longevity and safety.

Of course it’s from little acorns it arises — each tree starts life as a seed which lands in the soil — the first miracle being that it manages to elude hungry fauna and remain there long enough to germinate and produce roots.

They tentatively enter the soil and before too long, anchor the new seedling in position, growing stronger with each passing day and season until after a while no human power can disrupt it.

This seedling quickly becomes a sapling, then semi-mature and produces seeds of its own, leading to more offspring all around, as the parent reaches maturity — and the garden can no longer be imagined without its presence.

In a forest situation where there are many trees growing near each other, the mother tree actually stays connected with its offspring through interconnected roots passing carbon, nitrogen and nutrients between each other as they need it — the mother tree continuing to care for her saplings well after they have developed into maturity.

As these trees die, which they surely will — as it is the way of things — they pass on their legacy, transferring nutrients and resources as they die off to the younger trees, a passing of the baton between the generations, if you will, a cutting of the horticultural apron springs.

These trees in our gardens offer protection to the younger, smaller and more immature plants.

Many, which could not tolerate high winds and exposed conditions, will thrive with the protection afforded by the tree.

She will shade from the sun those plants that are sensitive to its harsh rays, drying out waterlogged soils with her vast root system, and allowing other species to grow safely.

As the mother tree enters the winter of her life and eventually succumbs, it is up to those left behind her to thrive and offer the same protection and attributes as she has done.

Many of her offspring will have been lifted and moved to new gardens of their own, where they will be create their own ecosystems.

I remember once in 1990, walking the Hog’s Back in Surrey, (an ancient roadway from Winchester to Guildford, now a popular walking track), it was a year or two after the famous storm that hit England, felling among the many tens of thousands of trees, the seven oaks that gave the town in Kent its name.

Even after a couple of years, the damage was still clearly visible on that walkway with majestic trees lying on their side with root systems rudely exposed to the elements and passing ramblers.

I commented to my companion, Tony, who walked with me that day, on the pity of it all, seeing trees a few hundred years old, lying forlorn on their side so harshly and quickly plucked from the ground in one night.

“Don’t feel that way”, he advised, “rather look at it as an opportunity for new ecosystems and species to have their time, for where each tree once stood, the area which they commanded now had new light shining upon it and this would allow a new seed to germinate, take root and so would begin a new period.”

That reality seemed harsh at the time, logical and correct in the order of things, but harsh nonetheless.

But such is nature, she is harsh or perhaps she’s not, perhaps it’s just our perception — maybe nature is being kind allowing tired or sick trees their time to go, and giving the opportunity to new specimens to take over.

Perhaps she is being kind and it would be harsh if the new trees didn’t get their opportunity and their time to shine.

Whatever the truth it hurts to lose a tree, it hurts the soil and it hurts the gardener, Tony too is gone now too, and the Hog’s Back has many trees of 20 – 25 years of age, babies in tree terms.

When the mother tree is gone the garden feels exposed, her absence leaves a gaping wound that only time will heal, as the garden calluses over and somehow fills the gap that once seemed an impossible task.

Our garden lost its mother tree this year, nature and God deemed that it was time for her offspring to stand on their own.

And stand on our own we will, offering safety, security and nourishment to our own gardens as best we can, but it hurts to have those roots severed.

It hurts more at Christmas than at other times of the year, as all those who have left are in all of our thoughts.

I am lucky — we have a beautiful new seedling in our garden, but it hurts too that she will never have seen the mother tree that started it all.

She however, has her own mother tree and so it goes on.

I love Christmas each year, it’s like a constant in life, a time to take stock once more and look forward once again.

Wherever you are this Christmas please enjoy it, enjoy those you are with, enjoy the time spent together and enjoy being outside in your garden for it is here that everything begins and ends, and also here that you can find true happiness and true peace of mind.

It is in the garden that you can truly connect with the universe, if you allow yourself.