Thanks to you all, the petition for the Campaign for legal protection of Ancient Yews has just reached 142,000! A really amazing achievement! Meanwhile I’ve been thinking, that in addition to getting legal protection for these immortal giants, we really should do something about getting our communities living around these yews to become more aware of them, adopting them and doing simple things for them like picking off the ivy. A friend of mine Dan has got a team together willing to do this for yews in Carmarthenshire. Another friend of mine, Heather spent weeks clearing off ivy and brambles from a yew at Cantref which was more or less presumed dead. I told her the yew would reward her efforts and it did, springing into new life! Many of our old and ancient yews are looking a bit uncared for these days. As well as there being more of them, 60 years ago, they were also in much better shape on the whole. Church wardens often kept records of their girth measurements and kept them free of ivy, to prevent smothered branches developing to act like sails, and cause damage to the trees in strong gales. Ivy also takes light and nutrients from the yews and detracts from their whole majestic appearance, as well as hiding the trunks so we can’t marvel at the extraordinary formations of the yew wood. It is sad to see them in such a state and I am struck when I visit yews in Brittany, to see how well groomed they are with space around them clear and free of weeds. Perhaps it is because they have so few ancient yews left there, compared to us, that they are proud of them and celebrate them.

I’m sorry to say that in Britain I have many a time seen churchyard rubbish piled against these sacred trees and even oil tanks kept inside them! One church even kept a digger and corrugated iron sheets under the canopy and yet another, a coal house inside the trunk! You can imagine what the saints and holy people who planted them would have thought of that! At one time there would have been fines for such offences. There is such a disregard for some yews, I find it quite heart breaking that we should have gone so far in the wrong direction. The only true response to a living organism able to live forever, must be to view them with deep respect for being so utterly, utterly awesome. 

Some of our ancient yews are of course celebrated, given space and paid attention to, like the 3,000 year old yew here at Peterchurch in Herefordshire, whose unusual trunk, free from ivy and crumbling stone walls, is able to be studied and admired. My hope is that eventually all of them will be honoured and protected.

Keep signing and sharing. We'll get there!