Rebecca Beinart

‘The Forest of Lost Trees’, is a proposed performance. A performance in which stories are told in a forest. Lots of stories, true stories, stories that other people have told me, that I have dug up from history, that I have elaborated from archive, that I’ve intuited from a tree stump. Stories that are remembered and spoken aloud.

As I make the performance, I will be writing. But in writing, I am thinking about speaking – whose turn of phrase is this? What is it like to remember these words? Are the words important or will the story be told a different way each time, the teller telling in their own way?

Originally published on jerwoodopenforest.org/journal

I meet Nikki Morgans, the Recreation & Community Ranger at Leigh Woods in the late afternoon. This woodland, just outside Bristol, was gifted to the National Trust in 1908 by George Wills, a tobacco magnate. The Forestry Commission bought an adjoining section of land in the 1940s, at the time described as ‘devastated woodland’ having been largely felled during World War II – this has since been restored and is now a beautiful forest with SSSI status.

Originally published on jerwoodopenforest.org/journal

Westonbirt Arboretum is an international visitor attraction and you can see why. This beautiful and extensive arboretum includes an incredible collection of trees, building upon the original plantings of Robert Holford, a wealthy Victorian. Holford was part of the mid 19th-century boom in plant imports – as gardeners and botanists raced to find, grow and display exotic plants. Influential nurseries and collectors such as Holford sent Plant Hunters out to remote parts of the world – the booty of which is still evident in the arboretum today.

Originally published on jerwoodopenforest.org/journal

The layering of histories in the landscape interests me. My project explores loss and memory – in relation to specific trees but also the wider landscape. Doreen Massey, reflecting on a woodland, writes of ‘places as meeting places; of people, of histories, of the flows and movements of myriad nonhuman things. In that sense places do not come fully formed … rather they are intersections, and as such must be negotiated.’ (Kings Wood: A Context). Birklands is an amazing example of this meeting of human history, natural history and a place formed through ongoing negotiation.

Originally published on: jerwoodopenforest.org/journal

Last week I visited forests in the Sherwood area looking at Forestry Commission sites as part of initial research for my Jerwood Open Forest project. My starting point is a search for ‘lost’ trees, but the forests are full of tangential paths.. they lead to stories eventually but by a circuitous route.