Trees of Kew, Alan Clark, September's meeting

 Alan Clark, an extreme allotment gardener (he has 9 allotments), kindly filled in at the last
moment replacing Andy Sands who fell ill. He has over 50 years’ experience of gardening.
His subject was ‘Trees of Kew’ talking about some of his favourite trees that he had known at
Kew Gardens over many years. Taking us on a walk around the gardens his amusing
comparisons and anecdotes were a helpful way to ensure his audience might remember
some of the facts. ‘Defining a tree by size is similar to horses and ponies’ – how many
hands are involved? All plants are selfish. The definition of a tree: it has to have a woody
stem and achieve a height of 5 metres. He described how ancient trees are using the
example of the Wollemi Pine, a 270 million years old fossil – the mineralised leaf of this pine.
One of the interesting points he explained was the various fungi and bugs that drink the sap
or use the trees as hosts and may eventually kill them and that Kew’s policy is to let nature
take its course and only occasionally remove a branch or part of a tree that is suffering.
Thinking about this it is obvious that Kew would have very few mature trees if they were all
chopped down once infected! Nature will always try and rebalance the environment,
starlings and blue tits both have their part to play in removing insects and caterpillars. He
talked about trees complicated reproduction cycles and that clouds of pollen are expensive
for a tree, it takes a lot of their energy.
He specifically mentioned the Japanese garden and Minka House. Meaning ‘houses of the
people’, ‘minka’ describes the simple homes of country-dwellers common in Japan until the
mid-20th century. A treasured feature of Japanese heritage, many of these farmhouses
have been preserved as historic landmarks. Kew’s minka belonged to the Yonezu family,
who lived in it after their main house was bombed in 1945. Bushes of the sacred bamboo
(Nandina domestica ‘firepower’) are planted around the entrance, believed to dispel bad
dreams.
After the last of the family died, the house was donated to Kew by the Japan Minka Reuse
and Recycle Association as part of the Japan 2001 Festival. It was rebuilt by a team of
Japanese carpenters and British builders, some of whom had worked on the Globe Theatre
– creating an unsung architectural gem in the heart of London.
One last fascinating fact was the stone pine, which had been in the Gardens since 1846 and
fell over in 2022, and there are now new seedlings being grown from a cone of the tree.