The idea of the memorial came to me when I was looking at aerial photographs of the shelled fields. While thinking about a living memorial in Ukraine, I had many questions, from conceptual ones about ways to remember events, the essence of commemoration, and how the meanings of monuments change over time; to more practical ones: how to choose the territory for the project, which trees are suitable, whether it is possible legally, how trees affect the harvest, etc.

In search of answers, I turned to Oksana Dovgopolova, PhD and curator of the cultural memory platform Past / Future / Art; Olesia Petrovych — nature protection manager of WWF Ukraine, head of the INSURE project ‘Implementation of nature-based climate solutions into Ukraine’s reform agenda’; and Hanna Lobchenko — project manager of the Forests department of WWF Ukraine.