Ted green is a rebel. He calls sheep “land reapers”. An equestrian center is “a dog food complex”. And the ancient tree expert’s new book includes a photo of him holding up two fingers to a portrait of Margaret Thatcher.
But the influential, iconoclastic Green, 89, who has lived around Windsor Great Park all his life and still works as a conservation adviser for the Crown Estate, is also a staunch advocate for King Charles’ protection of Britain’s unique asset of ancient trees .
Take the Guardian on a grand tour of Windsor Great Parkcontaining one of the largest concentrations of old oaks in the world, Green says that the king preserves not only these irreplaceable, unique biodiverse living monuments, but their genetics in the next generation of ancient trees.
We pass through private gates where he once trespassed, and Green points King Offa’s oak treea spectacularly sturdy and sprawling oak tree that can be 1,300 years old.
“The tree you’re looking at is a 1,000-year-old gene bank with more than a thousand-year-old gene bank soil,” he says. “Preserving the genes of these ancient trees is absolutely priceless.”
The sapling next door – and dozens of others across the park – was personally planted by the king, having been successfully propagated from twigs of ancient oak trees to preserve their unique genes in the next generation.
It is vital that mycorrhizal fungi and microorganisms associated with the ancient tree colonize the graft tree’s roots – grown from Windsor oaks – to ensure the biological continuity of hundreds of species supported by the original ancient tree .
“He’s a good boy,” Green said of the king.
Green spent his life challenging authority and scientific orthodoxies. Born in the town of Cheapside which borders the park, Green’s father was missing for much of his childhood during the war and was later confirmed dead when Japanese forces sank a POW boat. Green and his war-widow mother were evicted from their home and lived for two years in an ex-army concrete shed with a leaky roof.
Childhood illnesses meant that Green skipped school and from six was often roaming wild – trespassing – in Windsor Great Park. Here he developed an encyclopedic knowledge of trees and birds. As a young teenager he cycled 160 miles (260 km) in two days to go bird watching in Norfolk.
A leading ornithologist saw Green’s potential and encouraged him to do a technician job at Imperial College’s field station near the park. Green helped a wide range of scientists for 34 years before Thatcher’s university cuts led to his dismissal. Then he became an adviser to the Crown Estate in Windsor, where he remains today, known for bridging sometimes warring ecologists, arborists and conservationists.
Green’s advice to the Knepp estate about its struggling ancient oaks played a crucial role in its owners Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree rewild their country. “Rewilding is conservation of the land,” says Green.
According to TreeGreen “is mycorrhizal fungi” – a connector of ideas and people, an “original, free thinker” who constantly challenges received wisdom and conservation dogma.
“What’s great about Ted is how he thinks,” she says. “He came to the academy laterally, he didn’t go through that formal university route. He was a self-taught gamekeeper as a child. His outlook is so fresh, and all based on observation in the field. He likes to knock and say ‘that’s nonsense’ in meetings. He loves cross-pollination and that’s what science needs. All the ideas he brings up, you think, ‘this is so radical and off the wall’, and then you go, ‘he has a point’. He’s outside the box all the time.”
Green’s new memoir, Treetime, published by the Arboricultural Society charity and was funded by Green himself after winning £25,000 on the premium bonds, is packed with deep knowledge, bold theories – and provocations.
He is relaxed about non-native trees, says shade is worse for British forests than high deer populations, and is a fierce critic of “the current unimaginative national crusade to blanket our countryside in dense, dark, lifeless plantation forestry … under the guise of carbon capture”.
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He argues that open-grown trees growing for 400 years will sequester much more carbon than a group of small-crowned plantation trees with less than a century’s life. Open-grown trees also bring great biodiversity benefits, temperature regulation and even fruit. “The urban forest is incredibly important because they are all open-grown trees,” he points out.
Britain has a wealth of such trees: England has at least 3,400 ancient oaks (over 400 years old), which is estimated to be more than can be found in the rest of continental Europe. Oaks help support more than 2,000 species of animals, plants and fungi. In contrast, non-native fir was found to support net 37 species of invertebrates.
“We are a small island that got coal and therefore the demand for wood fuel has decreased,” explains Green. “Also, we haven’t had a war in 400 years – and refugees and armies need wood wherever they go – and above all, we’ve kept our aristocracy. We have to thank them.”
Unfortunately, Green points out, there are banks along the River Thames “that have more protection than our old trees”.
In France, maps mark notable old trees. “Pretty much every other country in Europe respects their old trees. We just take them for granted,” says Green.
According to Green and other ancient tree specialists, tree preservation orders are not fit for purpose because local authorities not the resources to enforce the law and protect trees. He wants a listing system for ancient trees, with funding to enforce protection and help owners manage their ancient trees positively.
The Heritage Trees billintroduced as a private member’s bill in the Lords this month by Barbara Young, would do so, but the prospects of it becoming law without government support are slim.
Green fears that mainstream conservation does not “recognize our obligation” to save our treasure of old trees. “For me, the trees are trying to tell us things. In the past, miners photographed canaries at the mine. If we want to look at the health of Europe, we only need to look at the health of the trees. Our single biggest obligation is the care of our old trees north of the Mediterranean.”
If he could have one wish, it would be “that our trees command the same respect and recognition that we give our historic buildings”, he says. “Trees are living heritage.”
