AUTHOR Philip Pullman celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jub-ilee by helping to plant an English oak for each decade of her rule.

The six trees were planted by the celebrated Cumnor novelist and the Oxford Preservation Trust (OPT) on its land alongside Marston Ferry Road on Sunday.

The planting also marked exactly 75 years – to the date and time – since the trust planted the avenue of hornbeam trees in Sunderland Avenue, North Oxford, to mark the Coronation of King George VI.

About 40 people, including members of the trust, Sheriff of Oxford Dee Sinclair and Lord Mayor of Oxford Alan Armitage, attended to plant the 15-year-old oak saplings.

Mr Pullman said: “It was a beautiful afternoon and a lovely occasion.

“The people on the trust felt Marston Ferry Road was a bit bland and needed something to decorate it.

“I think oak trees were the best choice because this is open country and six big oak trees will, in 200 years’ time, look very good there.”

Mr Pullman was chosen for the tree-planting honour because he immortalised the Sunderland Avenue hornbeams in the His Dark Materials trilogy.

He said: “I used to live near Sunderland Avenue and I saw them every day.

“I loved them for their oddness and the fact they look so symmetrical.

“They were so strange that they needed to be written about.”

He added: “I admire the work Oxford Preservation Trust does, and it is an honour to be asked to plant a tree.

“It is normally the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen who plant trees – it is not often a novelist is asked.”

Trust director Debbie Dance said: “It was a really charming event.

“We wanted to do something for the Queen’s Jubilee, but also it is exactly 75 years ago to the date and time when we started to plant trees in Oxford.

“We chose oak trees because they are English oaks.

“They will look splendid and people will be able to enjoy them when driving along Marston Ferry Link Road.

“We hope the trees will be here forever. This stuff is for the next generations.”

She added: “Philip Pullman has immortalised the trees in Sunderland Avenue, so he could not have been a more fitting person to plant them.”

The trees were paid for through donations by current and former OPT trustees, its Marston members and land agents Savills.

The trust owns about 900 acres of land in Oxford, including about 100 acres around Marston.