What can we learn from trees and the shape of time?

The title of the panel talk is taken from American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit’s evocative question - what can we learn from trees and the shape of time? At the time, she was reflecting  on English novelist and poet George Orwell’s quiet acts of planting roses and fruit trees amidst political chaos. Our panellists explore how time in the context of trees offers a different pace of thought, action, and remembering. Together, they’ll delve into the concept of the saeculum  - A saeculum is the span of living memory - the time in which an event or life is still held by those alive - and trees, with their longer rhythms, offer us a deeper saeculum: one of continuity, shelter, and remembrance beyond our own lifetimes. They will ask how planting, rewilding, and caring for nature can be political, spiritual, or cultural act. 

Join Ella Saltmarshe, Justine Boussard, and Sarah Spencer for a rich and layered conversation about how trees stretch our imagination beyond the present moment, and how legacy can grow slowly, season by season.

Speakers: Ella Saltmarshe (Long Time Project), Justine Boussard (Amateur Ancestor Project), Sarah Spencer (Think like a Tree)

Chair: Jai Sandhu (Joseph Rowntree Foundation)