Why choose Trafalgar Square?
‘It was actually something of a happy accident. I wanted the trees to be somewhere prominent and first thought of Parliament Square. But in my proposal, it was mistakenly communicated as Trafalgar Square, which when I then went to look at seemed the perfect location. Nelson’s Column is 169 feet tall, but some rainforest trees are higher than 200 feet. I thought of the impact of people looking at the remains of the trees and then looking up to beyond Nelson’s hat and realising that every four seconds we are chopping down a football-pitch sized forest of trees of that scale.’ What other rainforest facts can you tell us? ‘One of the hardest rainforest trees, the Denya, is used for pilings to sink into harbours to shore them up against the effects of climate change. How ironic is that?’ There must have been a few hurdles along the journey… ‘It’s absolutely been worth it, but the logistics have been immense. At one point, when the rains wouldn’t stop and the vehicles kept getting stuck, it
