Tree Trails

Tree Trails traces a 200-year-old story of art and heritage through trees and celebrates the cultural history we share with our arboreal neighbours.

The artworks featured on the map are either on permanent display or in national collections across Wales, Scotland, England and Ireland – a reminder, too, of the way ideas and people move across borders to weave a shared history. Trees and woods are both the frame within which the human drama unfolds and the material of choice for the artwork itself. Across the British Isles, from Samuel Palmer’s visions of The Magic Apple Tree (1830), the grand views of Wales in the paintings of Richard Wilson, to the moorland paintings of John William Inchbold, David Hockney’s industrial scenes of Bolton, Andy Goldsworthy’s, Hanging Trees (2007), David Nash’s Habitat (2015) and Katie Patterson’s Hollow (2015), Common Ground’s Tree Trails also maps the different places and spaces – imagined and real – that we all cohabit with trees.

Celebrating the 800th anniversary of the 1217 Charter of the Forest and the launch of the new Tree Charter in 2017, Tree Trails was created by Common Ground and illustrated by Adam Dant.

The Tree Charter recognises and protects the cultural impact of trees, and Tree Trails gives us a way into this rich seam of arboreal culture wherever we live in the UK. For more information about the Tree Charter campaign and for details of temporary exhibitions and events across the country to mark this landmark year for trees and woods, visit treecharter.uk.

Adam Dant was born in Cambridge and attended the Liverpool School of Art and later the Royal College of Art. In 2002, he received the Jerwood Drawing Prize and was selected as the official artist to document the UK General Election in 2015. His dense, elaborate, narrative drawings provide a unique insight into the complexities of social, cultural and political life. He lives in London with his family.

Copies of this map will available throughout the summer from the galleries and museums on the map. It is also available to download.

On the interactive map, we have also included a list of temporary exhibitions with an arboreal theme.