On a warm midsummer evening in 2022, I stood under a plane tree on the corner of a north London red-brick street and chatted with Marcus Decker, who was then preparing for his 50th night sleeping in a hammock high among the tree’s branches. The pair of them, he said, tree and Marcus, were becoming old friends – as well as allies in a struggle.
The tree, on the bucolically named Oakfield Road in Stroud Green, was on the frontline of a battle being waged in the capital, a triangular fight between multinational insurance companies, councils and some of London’s oldest residents – its 100,000 plane trees, originally planted to help the smoggy city breathe, because of the natural ability of their bark to absorb pollution and shed it in silvery layers.
