planting trees

I went to help with the tree planting at the new Heartwood Forest in Hertfordshire, owned by the Woodland Trust, and which will become the largest new native forest in England.

William Cobbett wrote about tree planting in his treatise, The Woodlands (1825). Cobbett was concerned with 'improvement', and in the extract below talks about the benefits of plantations for the creation of property and profit. This sentiment is against the current debates about the Forestry Commission's decision to sell their forests. I do like, however, his castigation of Dr Johnson for saying that planting a tree made him think of dying, because the tree would outlive him. While planting the saplings, I thought that this is their very purpose.

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