I’ve had a surreal summer. It began in Dame Judi Dench’s Surrey garden, where I presented her with a 6ft sapling descended from the Major Oak – just weeks before the sad news came that the legendary tree has died. Judi has been the Trust’s passionate patron for 12 years, and has a beautiful arboretum of around 100 trees, each planted to remember a lost loved one. Among them, as I discovered with a start, stands an 8ft-tall statue of Queen Victoria – a keepsake from her 2017 film Victoria and Abdul.

Dame Judi is fronting our new fundraising appeal: please do chip in via our website if you can. I’d like to thank everyone who has already donated – likewise all those who helped us raise £1 million to extend our land at Snaizeholme, the panoramic valley we are returning to nature in Wensleydale.

Our work there is part of the vast Northern Forest, featured in our previous issue, and I was heartened recently to see a photo of Andy Burnham clutching our latest impact report on that project. Back in 2018, the new PM planted one of its first trees, so he knows the Trust’s pedigree for repairing nature at scale. But only the Government can deliver the investment we need to take that blueprint UK-wide.

We have also proven our mettle in the Faughan Valley, which I visited recently with the superstar musician Nile Rodgers and our terrific youth volunteers. Together we planted 30 trees to celebrate three decades of the Trust in Northern Ireland – and as we dug, Nile sang a ditty to the tune of his hit We Are Family: ‘We are planting trees... They will live here for centuries.’ Like I said: surreal!