The children of the countryside are even more of a mystery to me than a rural recluse should have to expect. Not being drawn to football matches, I rarely see many of them out of doors and on foot. In years of wandering the wilder places that fringe the farms around me - the sandy shore, the lakes, the cliffs, the old oak scrub - I've never met any young person who seemed to be "exploring", in any sense, the natural world on their doorstep.
The youngsters' parallel lives seem devoted to machinery: dashing home from the school bus to master the tractor, the digger, the 4WD and now, I suppose, the computer. Suddenly I find them getting married and building a bungalow and I'm not even sure what they look like. Nature, in their childhood, has been a utilitarian backdrop: up the hill, perhaps, for sheep, but certainly not for the view. At school, "the environment" is all too easily lumped in with the wider chores of study.
Is it only urban kids who need nature to feed the imagination? Richard Long once made an inventory of what he called Childhood Ground - Abiding Places. Among them: "The cliff edge den. The look-out tree. The bicycle racing track in the wood. The dumps. The long grass place for stalking. The cave in the cliff. The slide. The footpath where we dug a trap . . ." My English, bows-and-arrows origin (well, tommy-guns) gives this a special resonance. Even with westerns relegated to the small hours, surely science fiction and tales of strange planets still invest the local patch of woody wasteground with similar dramatic promise? Or is everything now so polluted with needles, condoms and paedophilia that nobody would dream of letting the kids out of their sight to play?
The interface between green aspirations and the harsher urban realities is rehearsed with eminent practicality in the pages of a brochure for the new NeighbourWood Scheme, just launched by the Forest Service of the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources and due to run to the end of 2006. It aims to develop public woodlands in and around our villages, towns and cities, chiefly by funding projects which put local authorities in partnership with community groups. Small pockets of woodland as small as a quarter-acre (0.1 of a hectare) can be created in housing estates, on waste ground or river banks, or replace bleak belts of municipal grassland. New or improved woods at the urban fringes can merge the rawness of suburbia with the countryside beyond.
Along with the outline of technical advice that such projects are likely to call for, the brochure offers heartfelt guidelines on their best chances of surviving in often hostile conditions. It is now 10 years since the Tree Council of Ireland held its first national conference on urban forestry - time enough to refine the often bitter experience of trying to raise trees in today's Irish suburbs.
The overriding short-term objective is to get a basic woodland canopy up and running as soon as possible, registering its existence both physically and in the minds of the local community. This, the brochure admits, may be a tall order, given "intense and unpredictable pressure from vandalism" and conflict with other uses, ranging from ball games to horse-grazing and illegal dumping.
Pioneer trees such as alder (which horses find unpalatable), birch, sycamore and ash all make fast growth, and small, cheap whips, planted in legions, can be too lacking in "challenge-value" for vandals to bother with. Fences are almost an invitation to destruction, especially if they interfere with long-established paths and "natural desire lines". These are not, as one might suppose, the quickest ways to the bushes, but those paths worn straight across patches of grass by the logic of human geometry.
Thus, woodland design must do its best to fit in with existing patterns of use - even to leaving gaps in fences so that balls can be easily retrieved. The scheme allows up to 30 per cent of open space.
Among the trees, however, the threat of "undesirables" (from winos and addicts to child molesters, not to mention muggers, rapists and burglars) demands planning that ensures clear lines of sight beneath the canopy. This means banishing the natural undergrowth. Blind corners and isolated alcoves can have no place in the new neighbourwoods, where the secret places of childhood become adult dens of iniquity.
Beeches, with tall, clean trunks and a clear woodland floor, carry the biggest grants for new neighbourwoods - £4,000 per hectare for planting and £1,300 per hectare for maintenance. Oaks and other broadleaves follow, with scope for mixed planting; approved conifer mixtures are way down the scale of aid (and very likely to be stolen for Christmas).
Involvement of communities in planning, planting and caring for their trees is an obvious priority. The brochure's guidance on the vital partnership and maintenance, involving a huge range of professionals, has a confident, commonsense ring. The NeighbourWood Scheme, arriving on the heels of the Native Woodland Scheme and the Millennium People's Forests, shows vigorous official support for the planting of broadleaf trees. It comes, however, at a time of unprecedented encroachment on urban parkland for new roads and housing.
In Dublin, for example, green activists deplore the incursions on the big northside parks of Poppintree, Sillogue and Santry, while welcoming new development of parks such as those at Cherry Orchard and Darndale. A commitment that 20 per cent of all future undeveloped institutional land in Dublin will be kept as open space becomes a challenge to the imagination in the greening of city life.
In Galway, an urban woodland park is being created along the Terryland River, which runs from close to the city centre, through the suburbs, to the rural hinterland. The new neighbourwoods must be part of treating cities as ecosystems, in which nature helps to keep people healthy and sane.
Further information on the NeighbourWood Scheme from the Forest Service at the Department of Marine and Natural Resources, Johnstown Castle Estate, Co Wexford.
