Ask people about their first memories of trees, and usually they remember being up the branches of one, in their own private eyrie. Well, I definitely had a deprived childhood: I hardly ever climbed trees, mainly because of the impossible logistics of remaining decent in the company of boys, while wearing a skirt.
Eanna Ni Lamhna, teacher and contributor to RTE Radio's Mooney Goes Wild On One, had no such prudish constraints when she was growing up among old ash trees in Co Louth. "I was a terrible tomboy, I still am, I suppose," she says. "Of course we didn't observe any laws. .. so anyone that had a good tree, you'd go and climb it. You could hide up there away from everything. And you wouldn't answer if you were called, because you'd be murdered if you were caught." And when she was very small, in an earlier house, Eanna remembers gathering sticks for the fire in the beech wood at the bottom of the field, "I'm sure it was only three lines of trees - looking back on it now, it wasn't a wood at all. But we were only little ones - and the trees were so tall to us. It was a place that had always been wooded, so the ground was crinkly underfoot, and there were smells of mushrooms in the autumn. It was such a magical place."
Gerry Daly, another champion of trees, remembers being taught the names of trees by his grandmother, "I knew their names almost as soon as I could speak." Later on, exciting times were to be had with an alder tree, in a game - "lethal, but good fun" - that involved launching oneself from the "whippy top branches" onto a target below. The target was "your belt: you'd throw it down as something to aim at, just to jump onto" - yet another excellent function for that very useful item, the young boy's belt.
"When I think about it now," says Gerry, who gets edgy when his own kids climb the apple tree, "we could have been killed or seriously hurt, had we gone through the branches. So whether the alder tree was looking after us when we were doing that, or what, I don't know." But, as well as kindly cushioning his fall, Gerry's tree was a benign being in many other ways. It was inhaling carbon dioxide (one of the main culprits in the runaway greenhouse effect) and giving out oxygen; it was transpiring many gallons of water a day and thus helping maintain a life-sustaining humidity around it; and being an alder, it was home to up to 90 different species of insect.
In short, Gerry Daly's tree was an important lynch-pin in the Earth's ecosystem. It's unlikely that he knew that then, but the chances are that today's children do - or will shortly, thanks to a new project that will involve every single primary school child in the country.
Gerry Daly and Eanna Ni Lamhna are just two of the many people who have come together to help invent this massive project, the "biggest ever, by a mile" says Gerry Daly. "As far as I know it is unique in Europe, if not in the world."
Tree Day, which will become an annual event, is sponsored by the Forest Service and is organised by the Tree Council. This year it takes place on October 23rd. A teaching pack - one that covers everything from the parts of the tree to woodland ecology and the effects of trees on global warming - will be circulated to 3,000 schools by the end of this month.
Last Tuesday, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, launched the Tree Day project at St Mary's School in Dorset Street, Dublin. And like the rest of us, he has valuable memories of trees. He spoke about his "Dad", who was a farm manager at All Hallows College and who instilled in him "a love of our native Irish trees which covered Ireland after the last Ice Age - the oak, ash, birch, willow, hazel and yew. . ." And he went on, putting it in a nutshell: "Birds, insects and animals need trees to survive, and so it is up to us to care for our trees, and make sure we plant many more trees to beautify our city and country."
Now even a child could understand that.
Further information: Tree Council of Ireland, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin 8. Telephone: 01-6790699, fax: 016799457.
Nursery Notes: The Hardy Plant Nursery in Ballybrack, a mail-order outlet selling carefully grown and unusual perennials, opens every Saturday in September and October, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Ridge House, Ballybrack, Co Dublin. Telephone 01-2826973 and 088-2785614. For a catalogue send a 30p stamp to the above address.