Jackie Walker

As sponsor of the field maple outside 15 Tressillian Crescent in Brockley, planted in winter 2015/16, Jackie Walker writes,

“It was 1961, walking along Tressillian Road in Brockley as the wind blew cherry blossom storms around our feet. Just as my mother would do in Jamaica on Easter Sunday, we had dressed to impress. We were poor, but my mother’s style, and the second-hand stalls at Deptford Market, provided everything needed. I wore a white fur-collared jacket, white gloves and tiny pink diamanté earrings. I must have been the best dressed 7-year-old in town. Even now, nearly 70 years ago, the beauty of that Sunday, that blossom-filled spring morning, is with me. When my grandson was born and brought home to live in Tressillian Crescent I knew what I would give him – a tree he could see from his window. The family had become part of the landscape. It was his tree. Our tree. Our roots were firmly in the soil.”