English oak

It goes under the genome quickly.

You've got Quercus robur, which originated from Wales in England, and then somebody must have at some point took a seed over and it went from there.

So robur covers Hungary, France, Germany.

The species is the same, it's just the climate that it grows in is different.

So Pinchgreen Woodwork specializes in sort of timeless functional pieces made of British hardwoods, sustainably sourced British hardwoods, made to last a lifetime with, you know, a range of techniques and offering quite a sort of diverse product portfolio.

So it could be anything from chopping and serving boards to other homeware pieces to furniture and sort of bespoke made to order pieces and with every piece I like every piece to have a good amount of provenance so with each piece of timber that I source I like to have a story behind it I want there to be a backstory so that once someone buys a piece and perhaps they show it to a friend or family member they can tell them exactly where that piece has come from and I guess why it might mean so much to them So, for example, I source a lot of my timber from English estates or even Scottish castles because I believe these places often have quite a high importance to people because they may go on holiday and fall in love with these places.

And then if they come home and they can get a piece of that location, I think that becomes priceless to them.

And yeah, I find that you can't really, I mean, I may be wrong, but I often find that when you're looking through wooden products online, it often just says an oak side table or an oak bench.

So late October last year, um, And it came through an Instagram message because I tried, that was one of the first things I set up because I knew marketing myself would be the biggest challenge and I needed to get my name out there.

So, so yeah, I had a few posts online through Instagram and at that point in time, that was the only point you knew I existed as an outsider.

And clearly just from the posts, the very few posts that I had at that point, they were sort of taken by what I stood for and what I offered so they ordered a large English oak chopping board from me which was a gift for one of their colleagues who was leaving I was still in the prototyping phase for my very first product so it was one that to be quite honest I wasn't even sure about at the time but It was still a very nice piece and I have changed it quite a lot since.

But yeah, they really like the look of it.

And it's very old and it's tiny.

And it has those pews, old English pews, that have little doors on them in ancient wood, all carved.

And the family would open their door to their family pew and walk in and then shut the door until the service was over.

Just charming.

In the graveyard, which is also charming, I love old English graveyards.

Being of morbid and negative frame of mind, I like to walk around graveyards when I'm home.

But I love that graveyard because right in the middle, there is a very, very old grave.

The concrete of the grave is split, and through the concrete is a tree.

I don't know why it's called, it's a bad name for it.

But swamp white oak, English oak.

Yeah, the heritage.

I think heritage is a variety of English oak.

Okay.

Yeah, they do great here.

'Cause when we talk about the things that, um, or the virtues of being able to adapt and be really flexible, in the plant world, that's weeds.

It, it's not the oak trees that we love.

It, it's the plants that are not very useful or-

Yeah

So dandelions can move long distances easily, obviously.

Yeah.

You know, oak trees-

And they have so many generations-