Cultural figures have spearheaded this movement from the start. The artist Joseph Beuys helped found the world's first national "Green Party", die Grünen, in Germany in January 1980, and played a major role in physically greening the world, planting 7,000 oak trees around the German city of Kassel from 1982. The British artist David Nash has spent the last four decades making plant-based sculptures in North Wales. Ash Dome, a circular vaulted space made from 22 carefully trained ash trees, has been growing since 1977. It was initially conceived as an act of ecological optimism. "We were killing the planet," Nash has recalled. "Ash Dome was a long-term commitment, an act of faith".
