AT LAST! A sign of sanity – or, to put it less accusingly, good sense – over Britain's trees. Suppose there is a planting programme. What do you usually read? The trees will be native species. Our approval – vigorous thumbs up – is taken for granted.

But here's the thing. Only some 35 of the 600-plus varieties of tree that thrive in Britain are natives. Among those excluded are some of our most familiar – and useful – trees. Hill farmers long ago discovered the windbreak benefit of the sycamore, first recorded here in 1551. There are few exposed Dales farmhouses not protected by one or more of these densely-canopied trees – creating a classic Dales scene.

Across in the Lakes, the larch enjoys a similarly iconic place in the landscape. It was a newcomer in William Wordsworth's time, and he railed against it lengthily in his Guide To The Lakes. He branded its autumn colour, now a magnet for photographers, "spiritless unvaried yellow". Both varieties of chestnut, horse and sweet, are incomers, probably brought by the Romans. With their deeply-grooved barley-sugar trunks, sweet chestnuts are a glorious feature of the National Trust's Studley Royal parkland at Fountains Abbey. But fallen specimens are not being replaced. Probably the NT is sticking doggedly to a native-trees only policy.

But many other landowners are not. The Royal Forestry Society (RFS) reports that half its members have added non-native trees to their planting programmes. The sycamore, for long so hated that self-sown saplings were ruthlessly destroyed, is now a favourite. So is the sweet chestnut – and the 'common' walnut. The walnut is a truly superb tree, rarely blown down, magnificent in profile and colouring and, of course, producing highly-prized timber.

The impetus for this variety is the worrying number of diseases now attacking our trees, native and introduced. Simon Lloyd, head of the RFS, says: "By increasing the range of species we will be increasing the chances of significant trees surviving… The biggest threat to traditional forests is to do nothing because we are reluctant to stray from native species – often with no good reason." His last phrase is the key. Britain has one of the most favourable climates in the world for tree diversity. Great shame it's taken adversity to our trees for us to start to make the most of it.

FOR the armistice centenary the Archbishop of York composed a prayer. Dedicated to "the men and women who gave their lives in the cause of peace", it is offered to God "in the company of Christ, the Prince of peace".

Even if blasphemous, it can hardly be denied that the efforts of the Prince of peace so far have met with little success. In his poem At The Cenotaph (which was then new), Siegfried Sassoon pictured the Prince's adversary, the "Prince of Darkness", as being present. Bare-headed, he bows to the Cenotaph but walks away laughing. The most scathing of the war poets, Sassoon called the dead "swindled ghosts… our deeds with lies were lauded;/Our bones with wreaths rewarded,/Dud laurels to the last."

Those are the sentiments we need to carry forward – unless we are reconciled to a further world war, compared with which even the first might look like the Battle of Hastings.