Six feet above me, on a frosty afternoon in North Kensington, bartender Kay, 24, is trying to help his neighbours breathe a little easier. “It’s not coming down if I’m not,” the entrepreneur and mixologist tells me from halfway up a cherry tree, nodding towards lurking diggers who want to bring down his tree to make way for flats.
A few metres away, a banner pinned to blue hoardings echoes Kay’s sentiments: “Protect our old trees, they capture three times more CO2 than new trees,” it reads.
