How do people value trees? a multiple stakeholder story-telling exploration of tree-sources

The Every Tree Tells a Story (ETTAS) collaboration started in the spring of 2021 and continues to grow and develop. Project partners include a diverse group of academics, local authority professionals, and creative practitioners.

For a year, from the autumn of 2022 until the end of summer 2023, the Strathclyde Business School partners conceptualised and carried out an innovative civic engagement with a wide variety of Glasgow citizen stakeholders.

We used simple, but creatively designed, postcards to interact with Glaswegians of diverse ages, origins, roles, and locations, inviting them to share their stories about trees; if, why, and how trees matter to them. Some engagements were in quite structured workshops, as with educational, cultural, and sporting institutions. Other interactions were less formal and more emergent in style, in a variety of places in and around the city of Glasgow: including along the Kelvin Way, in George Square, on university campuses, in the pub, and at yoga classes. Throughout, our main approach used specially designed – and eco-printed - postcards to simply ask “Every tree tells a story: what’s yours?”.

Now with more than 200 postcards collected, we tell the wider story here of what it is about trees that is so valued and valuable to people, across the city of Glasgow, using the words and images from our city-wide engagement. It might be anticipated that the majority of our findings would focus on the familiar attributes of trees and the treescape. Obvious examples include clean air, shade, biodiversity, and visual appeal. These benefits were indeed both highlighted and
valued. More surprising were the richer, deeper, and more complex appreciation of the value of trees, shared very widely in most of our tree stories.

Four key themes emerged from our findings:

Making Home and Habitat: Trees are valued for their life-giving provision of oxygen, habitat for other species, and as a focal anchor point for human households and families. They provide a model of other ways of being, beyond the economic, drawing on older understandings of the home as embedded in natural place.

Trees as Family and Friends: Special trees and woodlands act as focal points for families and friends to deepen and strengthen relationships, across generations and locations.

Learning and Knowledge: The treescape provides a relational space, structure, shelter and spirit for free play, exploration, natural home-coming, and learning to live well with place, planet, and people.

Joy and Beauty: The treescape is revered as a place of special beauty and resonance, offering profound spiritual, emotional and aesthetic bounty.