Tree planting (and invasive mangling) season 2025/26 in full swing
It took me two years to get around to writing a second article about living in a tiny electric campervan, and it was written off before I even finished the article. I was too busy to mention I bought a canal boat in February and drove it the scenic route from Watford to Bath via Coventry, fighting with electronics and all sorts of nonsense. Having no time to write about cycling to Amsterdam to take notes on the stupid nonsense spouted at AI conferences. There's been so much going on that keeping up a cadence of long form Unf**king the Climate or writing in depth about vanlife, or at all about boatlife or charity, has just been impossible.
A new format is needed. I'm switching to a weekly write-up of everything I've been up to: saving the world with a spade and a chainsaw, boycotting fossil fuels, and helping commuincate solutions to folks the best I can along the way.
Winter used to be for driving up from NYC to Vermont to see how many ribs I could break skiing in the terrain parks, but these days it's more about smashing rhododendron in Wales and spraying japanese knotweed in London. I've got special articles coming for that, but this week has been fun.
Week 50, 2025
Monday - There's rarely a Monday where I know where I'm going or what I'm doing. The team need help, I delegate what I can, and I go to solve the highest priority that can't be delegated. I was getting ready for some tree planting in Pucklechurch, Bristol, but a friendly reforestation charity Dream for Trees needed help and with only a few days notice we were only able to find six volunteers. With 1,500 trees going into a primary school and only half a dozen helpers over the age of nine I set off for Sussex.
Thankfully Struggle Bus v2.0 (name TBD) can easily handle 205 miles on a charge instead of the old "100 miles". Cold and wet, who cares, the wildly efficient heat pump based HVAC system meant I could rag the heater with no concerns about mileage. I got myself to a random crusty cheap inn to save the charity a few quid (as the new van has no bed), ready for absolute chaos in the morning.
Tuesday - We got stuck into the ankle deep (and sometimes shin deep) mud somewhere in Sussex to make this magic happen. One class at a time, a battalion of littleuns would crest the hill, and run screaming into the fray to slide around planting 1,500 saplings to make a miniforest on their school.
Kayleigh Wright
The work was amazingly quick. The class split between a few of us grown ups, including a few Protect Earth regulars who'd cycled in from the nearest train to boost the ratio of olds to youngs.
I got some absolute legends (neurospicy) who all joined me in a session of what I call Directed Chaos. Me on the spade, I would shout "HOLE" and one of the four 8 year olds would throw a sapling into the hole from a distance with surprising accuracy. They shout "STIIIICK" and a bamboo cane appears in place. "GUUUUARD!" and the tree guard is on the bamboo stick, protecting the frail sapling from shrews and rabbits.
Not to blown my horn here but I got some brilliant feedback on this one:
Phil was also so encouraging and enthusiastic, equally able to pull out a stuck van from the mud and persuade a group of 30 five year olds to plant successfully.
HA! Off to sleep in an inn then off to the next job!
Wednesday - From Surrey to Sussex visiting the luxury hotel South Lodge. Back in 2022/23 we planted 1,500 trees here on the grounds, and we needed to replant 500 of them. Many had died when the cardboard guards known as "deer guards" were… eaten by dear. That experiment is over, and we're done using cardboard guards. They are useless.
Two corporate teams joined and got the work done in short order, leaving us afternoon time to tidy up some of the long grass and deal with a lovely treat: along with the saplings we planted, another 100+ self seeded oaks joined in! All heavily browsed by deer and looking more like a short shrub than an oak tree, these struggling oak saplings are now guarded and will be able to thrive as part of our woodland.
Of the original 1,500 planted, we recorded a 56.5% survival rate. With 500 replanted and ~100 naturally occurring that brings us back to about 1,250, which is cracking!
Back to Bristol, got more Pucklechurch planting to come.
Thursday - Up early ready to get stuck into the field for another day of wet planting, and I'm surprised with a phone call from Protect Earth's solicitors about the slowest land purchase in the world.
Finally, some contracts have appeared in draft form, but there are "a few things to discuss." I settle in for a complicated chat, and right as we get stuck into it my brain chips in a handy little question:
Oi, where's your grandads ring gone?
The ring I wear every day, that was left to me by my grandad, given to him by at least his grandad, and it's not on my finger.
Focusing on this call for the next 20 minutes was almost rough. Which field, car park, lay-by, or hotel across the South of England it could be in. "Flip to page 12, clause six...". I seem to remember hearing a noise and looking towards a wheelbarrow. "and as outlined in clause 1.2(a)..."
This land purchase has been held up for over a year so I knuckled down and sorted out all the terms and feedback, then packed my bags, ran to meet the South Gloucestershire team at the Pucklechurch planting site and threw the gear I was loaning them into the dirt, and ran off shrieking about this ring.
I had a four hour drive, with the 205 mile range of my new van once again coming to the rescue. The windscreen was covered in about as much water as my eyes but between the bouts of crying was equal lengths of steely determination. The wheelbarrow was only out of the van twice. It was in a concrete carpark. I seem to remember seeing a barrel. WAIT that's the Roebuck Inn in Forest Row. I was there Tuesday night. I parked next to that barrel emptying/sorting out the van. I heard it clink off and thought "I'll grab that in a second" before being distracted by 1,000 other things.
The phone was answered by a useless AI bot called Charlie that sounded like a 14 year old victorian Orphan. "it" could not help with lost and found or find me any humans, so I just drove all the way there. Despite obvious reservations I found my ring exactly in the square meter I pictured in my head!
Grandad would probably have laughed, called me a muppet, and ruffled my hair for worrying so much, but I wanted to celebrate in a way the man would appreciate. He fought fascism at home and across the globe, so the least I could do was spend the rest of the day playing Capture the Flag pulling down symbols of hatred from lampposts and motorway bridges all the way from Surrey to Newbury.
Friday - No tree planting, the opposite: I went to meet a man about restoring some ancient woodland. Most of Newbury is just one big mess rhododendron and cherry laurel, and every single ancient woodland there is struggling with this stuff. I've only had enough permission to faff around the edges but this would be a decent foot in the door.
This woodland features Capability Brown designed gardens, with some of the biggest rhododendron I've ever seen, planted 300 years ago along with some equally massive Yew trees.
Hopefully I can rustle up some funding for this one, but as always you can support this work directly with sponsorship to help things get done when no grants can be found.
Protect Earth
Saturday - Planting trees in Bristol! Dundry, right under the flight path of a bunch of people who live on a different plant not suffering from a climate crisis, we got to work planting "as many trees as possible" for a landowner who had all the trees, all the kit, but not enough hands to get the work done.
17 volunteers signed up, 2 cancelled, 3 came, leaving them, me, the landowners, and one more of the Protect Earth team to do everything ourselves. I think some folks woke up, looked out the window, and decided they were made out of sugar, but they missed out on an amazing lunch, a stunning view, and the feeling of doing something constructive with your time instead of just watching the world burn from the sidelines because grabbing a fire extinguisher seemed like hard work.
Sunday - Back to the same spot, for more planting, more amazing lunch, and more massive letdown from my fellow Bristolians. 18 signups leaving all the work to be done by a handful of amazing folks. Once again the majority of the people who actually came out to plant trees were immigrants, which is a trend I'm noticing more and more over the last two years. White British people sit around complaining, whilst people from far flung lands get stuck in to protect their new homes and their communities.
Tree planting has to be done in winter, because the saplings need to be dormant to be "pulled" from the ground in nurseries then transferred. That sort of thing would kill them in summer, and they need time to establish roots in the soil ready for spring.
Every winter is the coldest you'll experience as the climate continues to warm, and records are getting broken every month, but if we wait until December becomes short and t-shirt weather we've left it far too late.
Planting trees is cold and wet. but jackets exist and winter be like that. Sometimes things come up, but I need those of you with no excuse to know you were shown up by children and immigrants. This is important work and I hope to see more of you getting stuck in as the season continues. First round is on me afterwards.
Thoughts
Fitness is low. Emotions are high. Everyting is wet and with no way to clean or dry anything on the boat (or any electricity to speak of) it's been a struggle. I'm getting almost zero paid work done lately as it's just all go on the charity (tree planting and invasive removal) this time of year.
I'm excited to get this land over the line and experience a whole new chapter of my life, working on a community woodland in my own community instead of being seen as some suspect outsider who might be in it for the wrong reasons. People just know I love restoring nature and I will channel whatever influence, stubbornness, and rage I can to get as much done as possible.
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