In the Autumn of 1999 I found myself passing close to Wenlock Edge on a journey taking Julia & her daughter Holly to see Julia's parents in Cheshire. We contacted Robert Hart & arranged to stay overnight at Highwood Hill en-route. After taking Julia & Holly the rest of the way the following day, I returned to spend a week with Robert & to help him with his beautiful forest garden. Steve Charter had spent some time with Robert during the previous year, trying among other things to pull together his life story. Steve contacted me when I returned from Eire & told me that I should go & visit Robert as he felt that we would have a lot in common. With one thing & another though I didn't get there as soon as I could have done. Having finally got there it was clear that what Robert really wanted most of all was some company. The garden he was struggling with, but he felt that he would soon be fit enough again to get out there & sort it out. The situation had not been helped by Robert's long term co-gardener; Garnet Jones, also having been ill & expecting a major operation soon afterwards.

 It has to be said, that the garden still looked great, even with a whole season with little work done on it. I enjoyed spending quiet time in amongst the trees, observing how still it was in the garden, while I could hear the wind blowing beyond it. When Robert showed me around he told me about the trees that he had dedicated to different people whom he had admired for what they had done in their lives. I found out how delicious Service tree berries are & got to see what a mature forest garden really looks like at last.

 We spent a lot of time in conversation, sometimes Robert was really lucid, his mind razor sharp & his compassion & intelligence really shone through. At other times he was very confused & I found it very hard work. He told me much about his life & what had happened at Highwood. How he came to be living in little more than a shed, while his neighbours resided in the rest of the house, smartly painted & with modern windows. It seemed that he had always longed to live in community & invited a group of other people to join him in a Trust sometimes during the 1980's. Robert handed over the house & land it seems to the Trust, but his dislike of paperwork made the whole thing very confusing for me to work out. It seems that the strong personality of one of the other people turned the group against him & one by one the others left. Leaving just the couple in the house who were still in residence, while Robert who had resigned from the Trust in protest was left to live in what was originally the shed & workshop.

 I only met the neighbour once, when he came in & asked me to move my van so he could park in the garage. Even though Robert was right there he didn't even ask him how he was. I found the whole situation really shocking. That week I helped Robert with day to day things; he had a helper from Social Services come in for half an hour or so each morning to clean & bring in food, but it was clear that he needed much more. Although he has said in his books that he followed a vegan diet, it was clear that this was not what he was being fed & so Julia & I were pleased that we had brought him a selection of vegan foods when we arrived. It was also good that later in the week I had the opportunity to take him to a relatively local health food shop on one of our drives out, to stock up on more vegan staples. As we travelled around he told me about the places that we passed, all about the Geology & the History of the area. Those little trips out into the surrounding countryside clearly meant so much to him, he obviously hadn't been away from Highwood for quite some time. Something confirmed by the people in the Health Food Shop who had worried that he might have fallen ill as he had not visited for so long.

 Towards the end of the week he asked if Julia, Holly & I would like to move in with him & help with the garden. Much that it was a tempting proposition, anyone who had visited Robert & seen the condition of the tiny lean-to that he was living in would know how impractical this would have been with a child. I left feeling a desire to do something to help ensure that the Forest garden he had created there remained in safe hands. After my visit, Steve & I compared what we had both learned about what had gone on at Highwood. We were concerned that the land may not have been safe at that time & decided that if we could get the proposed Ecoforest Garden Trust into a form he was happy with he might sign the garden over to it. However, by the time this came together in February & I got to visit Robert again, he was in a nursing home & unable to recognise me. I left shocked & spent the next few weeks trying to contact people who might be able to help sort out the legal side of things. I only had phone access at this time, so Steve dealt with the various emails & forwarded them on to me by post.

 I was making phone calls to find out more about what legal provisions had already been made for the land. Eventually I tracked down the solicitor who had taken down Robert's Will, but all she would tell me was that he had changed it fairly recently. This at least gave me some hope that it would end up in good hands. She asked if I would write down what I knew about the situation & send it on to her, so that she had it on file if needed. Thus, I wrote this four page letter detailing what I knew:

 Soon afterwards I heard the news that Robert had died. It was a sad day, but it ended speculation about what was in Robert's Will. He had left the Forest Garden to Rowena Stone who had helped him a lot with it over the years, so it was at least still in good hands.

 Julia & I planted a cherry tree at 'Little Oak' at the time of his funeral. We thought about going up to Rushbury, but felt that what Robert would really have prefered us to do was to stay at home & plant a tree. I spoke to Maddy Harland on the phone about putting something in Permaculture magazine about Robert's death & she wrote some things down, but in the end they republished an article that Ken Fern had written about Robert a few years earlier. It was a fitting tribute to a man who has left us a great legacy, both with the Forest garden & with his words. I'm sure that there are many people like myself whose lives have been enriched by his prescence & his gifts to us all.