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As a child, an oak tree grew outside my bedroom window. Its leaves were a rich dark green, and it produced a copious crop of acorns every year. On the next street corner, there was a sycamore tree whose seeds twirled like helicopter blades as they fell in the autumn. In the park that my mother took us to, a weeping willow brushed the surface of the pond with its leaves. Those trees had made a mark on me very early on.

In my teenage years, I would climb the trees in the adventure playground, swing on the ropes, and whizz down the rope slide. Over and over again. While at university, I would admire the plane tree in the quad and marvel at the variety of species in the University Parks: silver birch, copper beech, ash, pine, poplar, and more exotic varieties, such as the Maidenhair tree.

And, then, in late middle age, my partner and I moved to York, just a 15-minute drive from the Castle Howard stately home. A few days after they opened part of the estate as the Yorkshire Arboretum, we went along to see what it was like. It was a bitterly cold winter’s day, and the ticket office was a Portakabin in a grass and gravel car park. Ours was the only car there. We paid a year’s subscription and went off to explore the 120 acre site.

At first, the path took us down a narrow neck of pasture and scrub. It was bounded by an unattractive chain-link fence to our right. But, to our left, was a high stone wall that could have been the outer wall of a castle, with battlements and lookout towers, which we guessed was once the boundary wall of the estate. It seemed otherworldly in the frosty air. We almost expected a knight in shiny armour to come riding up to challenge us.

Then the land opened out to reveal a broad swathe of open woods – stands of trees of varying species, separated by grassy spaces, stretching away into the distance. There was no-one else in sight. No mythical knights, no arborists, no gardeners, no dog walkers. We were quite alone. For the next 90 minutes, this was our own private place. And we loved it.

We went to the arboretum many times over the years. The entrance has moved, a bigger car park has been built, a café and education centre has sprung up, and the number of visitors has mushroomed. But it is still a special place. In fact, of all the places I have visited, it is one of my very favourites.

In honour of that special place, I am offering this piece by Luke Dowsett as my track-of-the-week.

Luke is one of those hidden artists. He hides from Google among other Luke Dowsetts: an actor, a property agent, an I.T. consultant, a martial arts fighter. If you are looking for the musician, you will find his music on Bandcamp, SoundCloud and Spotify, but almost nothing about the man himself. His presence on the Net seems to consist of “Brisbane, Australia”. But there is an interview on the Proglodytes website from August 2018 that shines a glimmer of light through the leaves of the search tree.

This particular trunk and branch admirer hasn’t released any full albums. The Dowsett canon seems to have started with the single, History, in 2015. This was followed in 2016 by an EP, Colour Storm. The Trees and I is from his second EP (Separate, 2018). And his latest release is another EP, In Search Of, that hit the streaming sites in January 2023.

Every artist says that their most recent work is their best yet, but the independent Crotchety Review Panel would support any such claim, should Luke care to make it. If the Trees has seeded your appetite for Luke Dowsett’s music, do check out the other branches of his work. I find it grows on you.

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