Today is Celebration Day: an annual day to remember the lives of those who are no longer here and who have shaped us.
To mark the day, the National Trust has presented The King – their Patron - with the first seedling grown from seed collected from the Sycamore Gap tree. The tree was a popular landmark which grew in a natural dip in the countryside along Hadrian’s Wall before it was chopped down in September 2023.
When the seedling has grown, His Majesty hopes to scale it in Windsor Great Park, where in time the wind will help ensure that its seeds, in their turn, are still more widely distributed. Part of the power of trees to move and console us lies in the continuity and hope they represent: the sense that, rooted in the past and flourishing in the present, their seeds will be carried into an as yet unimaginable future.
