Is planting trees the best thing you can do for your health and the planet?

Prince Charles has said that all he really wants to do is plant trees. When I turned a patch of land into a wood, I learned how important this is 'What's all this tree-planting for?" I was asked when I began writing about restoring a piece of land I had bought in Somerset as a wood-cum-orchard. The truth is, I just love trees. And I am not alone. "As I get older, all I really long for is to plant trees," Prince Charles says in a forthcoming BBC documentary in which he is filmed in the wood he planted on the day Prince George was born. I, too, love to be among trees, and want to leave young ones behind when I die. This is why I planted them, and continue to plant them.We have inherited mature and wonderful trees in our cities, towns, villages, gardens, cemeteries, woods and countryside. They were planted, or self-sown, years, even centuries ago. We take them for granted, ignore the creatures living among them, remain in ignorance of the good trees are doing us (cleaning the air, for instance) and cut them down for new developments. Yet we retain a feeling of affection for the idea of them, which may account for the reaction the government faced in 2010 when it sought to sell off publicly owned woods, and for the wide support the Woodland Trust attracts. Continue reading...