Why planting a tree is the best way to be remembered

Trees are a gift to posterity - so get planting if you'd like to be remembered kindly

Oak Tree in a field in summer, Lake District National Park, Cumbria, UK
Oak tree in the Lake District, Cumbria Credit: incamerastock / Alamy 

Simon Aleyn, vicar of Bray in Berkshire in the 16th century, was described a century later in Worthies of England as: “The vivacious vicar living under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was first a Papist, then a Protestant, then a Papist, then a Protestant again. He had seen some martyrs burnt (two miles off) at Windsor and found this fire too hot for his tender temper.

“This vicar, being taxed by one for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, said, ‘Not so, for I always kept my principle, which is this – to live and die the Vicar of Bray’.”

In short, Aleyn is either a byword for someone willing to adjust his principles to suit whoever happens to be in charge, or a sensible chap who didn’t fancy being needlessly incinerated, depending on your viewpoint.

I was reminded of his story while reading an essay by George Orwell entitled A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray. In it, Orwell tells of visiting Bray church and finding a magnificent yew tree, apparently planted by the eponymous vicar. Surely, mused Orwell, someone responsible for planting such a lovely tree couldn’t be such a bad chap? Specifically, he wrote: “The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood types, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions.”

He goes on to recall visiting a cottage where he used to live, and where he had planted some roses from Woolworths (remember those?) and a job lot of cheap fruit trees. A few had died, but most were flourishing, giving him a pleasant “feeling of having done good unconsciously”.

He rejoiced in the thought that while he had never had a single apple from a Cox’s Orange Pippin he had planted, it looked like someone was going to have quite a few, and might still be doing so well into the 21st century. Maybe they still are?

Who these days, Orwell laments, plants a quince, a mulberry or a medlar? I reckon mulberries are more fashionable than in 1946, when Orwell was writing, but medlars are still out of favour; the only medlars I recall seeing have been old trees, in old gardens. Orwell concludes with “it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an anti-social act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground. And even if one in 20 of them came to maturity, you might do quite a lot of harm in your lifetime, and still, like the Vicar of Bray, end up as a public benefactor after all”.

It’s worth adding that next to making a pond, planting a tree is about the best thing you can do for wildlife. They provide shade and reduce noise, dust, pollution and flooding. And while an oak tree might only be for those with enormous gardens, there are plenty of trees for small gardens, for example cherries, hawthorns, crab apples or rowans.

So if you want to be fondly remembered long after your other deeds, good or bad, are forgotten, you know what to do.

  • Find Ken Thompson’s second collection of Telegraph columns Notes From a Sceptical Gardener at books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 1514.