Dorset duo Ninebarrow featuring Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere have announced the release of their fourth arboreal-titled album ‘A Pocket Full of Acorns’. In the week leading up to the release on March 5, 2021, the duo may well have more than a pocket full as they set to planting a new woodland to offset their carbon footprint.
They will lead a working party in the planting of 1,000 native English trees and 200 shrubs to form ‘The Ninebarrow Woodland’.
To be sited on three acres of land near Gillingham in north Dorset, the ambitious project will see saplings of 10 different species planted, half of which will be English oaks, tying neatly in with the album’s ‘acorn’ title.
This comes at a crucial time, especially in light of how the UK is falling short of targets for tree coverage – just 13% of the UK’s total land area has tree cover (compared to an EU average of 35%). Projects like this will hopefully highlight the need to do more in the UK, not just in planting more but also increasing the number of tree nurseries growing native tree species which offer greater disease resistance. We’ve already seen the damage caused by ash dieback which is caused by a fungus introduced from abroad and it is believed it has killed around 80% of ash trees. To place this in perspective, the National Trust are projecting some 40,000 trees needing to be felled on their land in order to combat the surge in ash dieback.
Talking about their environmental impact Jon says:
“Jay and I have long had concerns about the impact our touring has on the environment. In a normal year, we’d drive more than 10,000 miles across the country and that alone is a frightening thought in terms of the carbon footprint it creates. One wet Sunday afternoon, we started thinking about the fact that Ninebarrow’s carbon footprint is generated not only by us but also by the audiences that travel to come and see us play.
“Being a bit of a spreadsheet geek, I decided to try to calculate our carbon footprint to the best of my ability. We sell a lot of gig tickets through our own website, so have a fairly good idea how far people travel to come to our shows. It took quite a bit of research and some estimating as to who may have shared cars or taken public transport – but at the final reckoning we’d worked out that every year, Ninebarrow was generating over 2.5 tonnes of Co2 just through the mileage we were clocking up. On top of that, we estimated that a further half tonne of Co2 was being generated per gig through audiences travelling to and from the venues.
“It was a shock to discover that across our musical careers, which started in 2012 and might, if we are lucky, span some 25-30 years, we would generate nearly 1000 tonnes of Co2.”
That thought was in their minds as they started working on their fourth studio album. Whilst visiting the National Trust’s Souter Lighthouse in South Shields they learnt of the true story of Newcastle-on-Tyne born Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, Lord Nelson’s second-in-command at the Battle of Trafalgar.
At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the grand ships of the Royal Navy were built from mighty oaks and Collingwood became concerned that forests were being depleted. Fearful for the future of the Navy and the nation he took to carrying acorns in his pockets, planting seeds in suitable places as he went on his rambles. Says Jay: “The story really touched us. The notion of using one’s time on earth to help secure a future for those who come after us seems to have been lost in modern times.”
“We decided to make the resulting song –A Pocket Full of Acorns – the title track of the new album and the more we thought about it, the more we felt the need to do more. Writing a song about other people doing something for future generations just didn’t seem to go far enough. And so we came up with the idea of planting a wood. A wood with enough trees to offset not only Ninebarrow’s past and future carbon emissions but also the carbon footprint of our past and future audiences too.
“We’re fortunate to have family living in north Dorset who happen to have a three acre field, currently lying fallow, who were enthusiastic about our idea.”
The duo made an application to The Woodland Trust MORE Woods scheme and were delighted when the Trust agreed to cover 75% of the costs of planting 1000 native broad-leaved trees and 200 shrubs on this piece of land.
So in the week that A Pocket Full of Acorns is released Jon and Jay will gather with a group of socially distanced friends and family to dig deep and plant The Ninebarrow Woodland. Spearheaded by 500 oaks, the collection will also include 125 each of silver birch and hornbeam, 75 wild cherries, 50 field maples and 25 each of alder, crab apple, walnut, rowan and sweet chestnut.
In addition there will be three different shrubs as a windbreak – 100 hazel, 75 hawthorn and 25 spindle bushes.
Says Jon: “We’re under no illusions about the imperceptible impact that planting 1000 trees will have on the climate emergency our planet is currently facing. But we wanted to make a statement about the fact that it is within all our powers to do more than we are currently doing. We all need to play our part and take what action we can to ensure future generations and life on this planet in all its myriad forms – have something to inherit.”
A Pocket Full of Acorns is released on the Winding Track label on Friday, March 5 (CD and DL format), exclusively available from the Ninebarrow website www.ninebarrow.co.uk