The Phantom Planter

This time 5 years ago!  

 That was 5 years ago today the BBC came out and did a documentary on my phantom planting. I had only just started a few months and they had got in touch.  This was Vinnie Hurrell from the Stephen Nolan show and my good mate Billy Boy! Vinnie had said after the filming that me and my mate Billy were like something from a James Bond film! Back then I never asked for any money to make this film, I never had intentions back then to make money from what I'm doing.  Then as time went by and more trees went in the ground with more publicity generated, The Phantom Planter soon became my life. This all had a great effect on me financially. I remember when I first started asking for money on here I got messages from people saying that they've been totally put off my page now that I've brought money into it. Or when I started to advertise my Buddha Beds mattresses to try and generate income I got the same sort of messages, that they would prefer my page to be about trees and not ma...

 Was back up at the Holy Well yesterday again getting more water.  I've been saying that this area where the well is is a very ancient and mystical part of the Emerald Isle.  There are literally hundreds of ancient sites all over this area of Slieve Croob.  I went for a walk about yesterday and just up the hill from where this well water is coming out off is this amazing looking ancient Dolmon.  No one really knows truly what these Dolmons mean or how and what they were built for.  In Irish mythology they say there was a race of giants called the Fir Bolg who used to live on this island. They were said to be massive people of around 8ft tall.  Maybe it was the Fir Bolg that built these structures.  These types structures are all over this area and date back to around 5000 years old.  Many of these structures here on the Emerald Isle are older than the Pyramids.  Love how even the local farmer has a the Dolman on the gate.  What a pl...

 Sad day for this big oak tree which was one of my favorites, you can see from one of the pics where I used to climb up and sit in the middle of it. Now the old oak tree has been shattered from a massive fallen beech tree after the storm we had. It looks like the oak tried to catch the beech tree and is still holding onto it. Cant believe though that the oak is still standing and the base of the oak is still looking strongly rooted into the ground, it hasn't budged one bit! As I've been out and about observing the forests after the storm I can see why the Druids called the oak the king tree. Not one veteran or ancient oak tree have I seen fall, not even slightly moved at all.  All of them are firmly into the ground. Druid is also supposed to mean oak. The oak was a very sacred tree to the Druids and was a place of worship for them, I can see why.  Most of you probably know that I have a selection of oak trees growing from acorns collected from many of the oldest oak trees...

 Planted the 25 Robin Hood oak trees yesterday at the northern perimeter of our Lisnabreeny Community orchard. We planted them fairly close together as I want them to become sort of like a hedge for sheltering the orchard from the northerly winds. The trees closest to the fence are all fruit trees with a row of mighty Robin Hood Oaks behind them. I was just standing looking over the whole orchard yesterday thinking that every tree here has been grown by us from seed or cutting and now they are all planted up! Now just a waiting game watching all these hundreds of trees grow. The oak trees I collected these acorns myself from Sherwood forest, the native cherry trees I picked the berries down near the phantom planters HQ in Belvoir forest, ate the berries of course and just popped my stones in a pot of soil right after eating and they grew into cherry trees. All the 274 apple trees are all native Irish apple trees that we went out and selected the scions/cuttings from old orchards al...

 Was watching Countryfile last night and it was about the Mourne Mountains aka Narnia and they were saying that Northern Ireland has the lowest native tree cover in Europe with something like 0.04 percent tree cover. Considering a squirrel could have went from one end of the country to the other across the treetops as 80% of the land mass of this island at one time was forest, the fact we now have the lowest tree cover is so sad! Somethings not right, we are the home of the ancient Ogham tree alphabet, our ancient culture is steeped with trees and nature. I remember reading also that the majority of our town and street names are named after trees in English or in Gaelic. I always find this sad too that when I'm out delivering I get to know street names quite well and when I would drive into an area called say the hawthorns or the oaks, never do you see hawthorns or oaks planted here. You'd think someone would twig that when building these new developments and naming them after ...