Rooted Ways

2 family workshops coming up at Pip's Pick Your Own :) booking is essential!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/secrets-of-the-hedgerow-at-pips-pick-your-own-family-fun-tickets-1991314440095?aff=oddtdtcreator

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1991088362892?aff=oddtdtcreator

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1991088362892?aff=oddtdtcreator

First Elderflower forage of the year. One of my first and favourite plants I've had the pleasure to know and love for many years. Thanks for your magic 💜💫💜

https://www.facebook.com/100051838253045/posts/1417005950037333/

Ecologist Suzanne Simard has changed how we see forests.

In the 1990s, Simard was studying Canadian forests when she noticed something strange: when loggers removed birch trees to help Douglas firs grow, the firs didn’t thrive. In fact, they struggled. Curious, she began tracing where nutrients were going — and what she found overturned a century of forest science.

Using radioactive carbon tracing, Simard showed that trees were sharing nutrients underground — not just within a species, but across species. Birch trees were passing carbon to fir trees through networks of mycorrhizal fungi — microscopic threads that connect tree roots. These fungal networks form a vast, hidden web beneath the forest floor, linking trees in systems that act less like individuals and more like communities.

She found that older, larger trees — often birches — served as central hubs, redistributing resources and stabilizing the ecosystem. When these trees were removed, the entire network weakened. Forests didn’t just lose biomass — they lost connection.

Simard’s discovery challenged the long-held view of forests as places of fierce competition. Instead, she revealed a system based on cooperation, signaling, and mutual support — a living network where trees share water, nitrogen, carbon, and even warning signals about pests and drought.

Her research reshaped forestry, conservation, and our understanding of how nature works: not as a fight for survival, but as a web of interdependence — mostly hidden beneath our feet.

To learn more, read Simard’s book:
"Finding the Mother Tree." Knopf, 2021.

https://c.org/wbjF5nw5dS

Sign the Petition Overturn the ban on turkeytail and cordyceps mushrooms