CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW 2023
Look out for my photographs of oak trees on the Action Oak stand at the Chelsea Flower Show this week.
I have settled down finally to turn my photographs and writing from the “On The Trail of The Buddha Tree” trip where 40 schools followed me live from the site where Buddha gained enlightenment near Patna, along the Ganges to Kolkata and then down the length of the Bengal Coast before picking up the final leg of the journey from war-torn northern Sri Lanka to the scared temples at Anuradhapura.
I am particularly pleased with my new talk “The A-Z of the Amazing Ash Tree – From Alzheimer’s to Zeus”. It is based on my new book ASH by Reaktion Books and highlights some of the extraordinary facts and stories I unearthed – from the role that the ash tree had in the mythology of the Greeks, Romans and Norse to the importance of ash in the development of settled agriculture, weaponry and transport to its medicinal use which spans over 2000 years from the Greeks, ancient Chinese , North American indigenous peoples and now in the 21st century the fight against diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.