In 2006, Coed Hills Rural Artspace, near Cardiff, invited me to create
work for an exhibition. I was inspired by a clearing that had recently
been cut into the conifer plantation at the site. The freshly cut stumps
of the trees reminded me of those left in the woods at the bottom of my
farm after a number of oak trees had been cut down many years ago and in
which small trees had since taken root. It was not long before I had
transplanted oak saplings from the woods on my farm into the stumps at
Coed Hills.
Sometime later, I learned that Coed Hills had once been an oak
wood that had been clear felled and then planted with conifer.