Find & hug a Silver Birch
Judith’s life journey with her Silver Birch tree.
I just wanted to start by saying Thank You to Diana, Hilary and an anonymous friend of Judith, who have all recently joined the coffee crew in buying a virtual coffee to support the podcast. 4 coffees pays for a month’s subscription fee to the podcast hosting platform, 6 coffees pay for a month of the editing software and 8 will fund the next run of publicity postcards to take to all the Summer shows. But also - each coffee gives me a buzz without the aid of caffeine, that listeners like and want this podcast in their ears!
When I told Mona Abboud recently that I was making an episode about the Silver Birch tree she immediately recounted her Russian mother’s advice that you should find one and tell it your sorrows. It is such a beautiful tree and you do just want to touch the luminous bark, maybe as Ashley in this week’s episode confessed, even peel away a piece of it. It is why when they were planting the Silver Birch trees in Horatio’s Garden in the London Spinal Cord injury Centre in Stanmore, they ensured that people in wheelchairs would be able to get up close and touch the trees.
I love to make episodes where I get to visit someone’s garden and in this one, I was extra lucky and as you will hear, visited two gardens. You can see photographs of both on the episode page. First there was Judith Kleinman’s small London courtyard with 3 slim and beautiful Silver Birch trees. She says of the trees “you get a real sense of vertical resting - “the energy that gravity has to go up but be rooted in safety in the ground.”
Judith’s drawing represents her journey with this tree and her connection with Silver Birch trees goes back to childhood when there was one outside her bedroom window. However the real significance of these trees comes from a more challenging time in her life when aged just 19 and a student at the Guildhall School of Music, she was involved in a car accident whilst on holiday and found herself spending an extended period of time in the Royal National Orthopeadic hospital in Stanmore where once again she encountered Silver Birch trees.
So the second garden in this episode is one designed by Tom Stuart Smith for the charity Horatio’s Garden in the London Spinal Cord injury centre in Stanmore. Horatio Chapple was an aspiring doctor who spent time at a spinal unit in his summer holidays and through his own observation and conversations with patients realised there was a real need for a garden. Tragically he was killed aged just 17 but the charity set up in his name has realised his idea and then married it with an ambition to build gardens in all 11 of the UK’s NHS spinal injury centres.
Ashley Edwards is the Head Gardener at the garden in Stanmore and it was a real joy to record the conversation between Ashley and Judith and to hear their thoughts on the healing power of nature from their perspectives of patient and gardener. I loved Ashley’s story of having helped a man in his fifties plant some seeds for the first time. I think most of us reading this blog will have been lucky enough to have experienced the magic of planting seeds and the hope that that brings.
It was wonderful to see that alongside the young Silver Birch trees in Horatio’s Garden there is an older tree too and you can just sit and watch the birds flitting in and out of them. If this episode does inspire you to plant one, remember there is as always, advice on the episode page.
Remembering the Silver Birch trees that she saw during her hospital stay Judith says: “I think what they've represented for me is the many different kinds of strengths there are in us and that we need to call on different strengths at different times. And that sort of flexibility and direction that they've got was such an inspiration from that time really.”
Have a lovely weekend
Sally