There is a particular kind of hope involved in planting a tree whose full life will unfold after your own has ended. Rosemary Mulholland has embraced that idea on a far larger scale, helping create a forest she knows she may never live to see in its mature form. Yet, as she told the BBC, she does not regard that distance between present effort and future reward as a sacrifice. She calls it “the greatest privilege” of her life. Her words capture the unusual logic of long-term restoration: the people who do the planting may never sit beneath the tallest trees, hear the full chorus of wildlife that returns or witness the landscape reach ecological maturity. Still, they choose to begin. Mulholland’s story is therefore about more than trees. It is about stewardship, patience and the decision to leave behind something that belongs not to one generation, but to everyone who comes after it. In that sense, the forest becomes a living inheritance, with each new tree representing a commitment to a future the planter may never personally experience.
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