Artist plants a tree for every Sycamore Gap painting sold
North Yorkshire artist plans to plant a tree for every Sycamore Gap painting sold.
A North Yorkshire artist has pledged to plant a tree for every Sycamore Gap painting that they sell.
Lucy Pittaway aims to create a woodland at Swinton Estate in memory of the felled tree that stood alongside Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland.
Lucy said: "It's going to provide a lovely lasting legacy and bring something positive from something negative that happened last September.
"It's a dream come true for me to be doing this. Never did I imagine that from creating a piece of art in memory of the Sycamore Gap, would I be planting a whole woodland."
After the felling, Lucy painted an image of the tree with a Northern Lights backdrop. She vowed to make a donation from each print sold towards creating a legacy woodland and to date nearly 2,400 have been bought.
The first 600 saplings will be planted during April, mainly sycamore along with oak, rowan, hazel and other native trees. The estate’s forestry team will then plant hundreds more saplings over the coming months and more mature species from the autumn.
The publicly accessible Lucy Pittaway Sycamore Gap Trail near Masham, North Yorkshire, will also bring new life to an area of the Swinton Estate devastated by larch tree blight.
Lucy continued to say: "We're going to continue to plant trees for every print sold.
"The trail itself will take a few months to complete and hopefully by the autumn it will be to a point where we can fully open it to the public."
Visitors to the Lucy Pittaway Sycamore Gap Trail will be able to follow a pathway formed by chippings from the felled larch trees on a woodland walk which will also feature artistic installations, areas to relax and education boards.