When we were deciding on the things to pack in the back of our small car to move here, we wanted to include all of our trees. We’d been carting our fruit, acer and other trees about for years. It seemed only fair to let them put their roots down in some welsh soil as soon as we could. Try as we might though, what with all of our “essentials” for those first few weeks here, we couldn’t find the space for them all in the back of our car. There was just one small gap behind the passenger seat. Just about (if I moved the seat forward to a very cramped leg position) enough space to squeeze our very treasured “Young Knobbley” – sapling of Old Knobbley.

So Young Knobbley journeyed with us and lived in its pot under the mobile home for the first two months. I don’t know why we didn’t plant our little oak tree straight away… looking back, I suppose it took us some time to fully feel like we belonged to the land, and then a little longer to make sure it really was “home” – that and we didn’t quite know where to plant such an important tree, and we didn’t want it to be accidentally mown over during the hay-making.

On the 30th of September 2011 the time seemed right. It was a wonderfully sunny day. We set about planting in the middle of the Party Field. What with finding the absolute centre of the triangular field and making sure the hole was filled with the right kind of mycorrhiza and compost, it took us most of the morning! (I hope the other trees we plant don’t take as long) and as you can see we have totally over protected the tree from rabbits (not that we’d seen any) and the southerly wind. This tree WILL survive!

We celebrated the planting of the first tree in the Forest Garden by adding this photo to Apparatjik’s call for 1000 trees to be planted to agreeneryouniverse (and have since received some tracks from another universe for our trouble – incidentally I’m listening to .,,. now )

Young Knobbley (as far as we know) is the youngest surviving tree of my favourite old Oak Tree – Old Knobbley. We collected four seeds from this ancient tree on the 13th of October 2007, gathering the acorns from the branches rather than the woodland floor, to ensure that they are the direct prodigy of the knobbly old tree (rather than the many other English Oaks around). Young Knobbley is the only one that germinated.