Leaves from Darwin Oak helping fund campaign to stop relief road that will see its demise
A Shropshire artist is making ceramic decorations inspired by the Darwin Oak’s fallen leaves to raise funds for a legal challenge to the Shrewsbury North West Relief Road.
Ruth Gibson, an experienced Arts Council-funded ceramicist based in Belle Vue, Shrewsbury, has been making clay leaves inspired by the 550-year-old oak.
They are being sold to raise money for Better Shrewsbury Transport’s legal challenge to the relief road scheme.
The Darwin Oak, so named because Shrewsbury-born naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin is believed to have regularly walked past it as a child, is one of nine veteran trees set to be felled to allow the construction of the new road,
Ruth said: "I began by working on site in Shelton Rough, gathering the fallen oak leaves from the Darwin Oak, and pressing them into thin sheets of clay preserving their memory for years to come.
