Michael Heseltine made a million quickly and sketched his career on an envelope as a young man. The final step? Becoming prime minister.

Having narrowly failed, he is now concentrating on providing a much more permanent and visible reminder of his stay on earth, a huge arboretum near his country home.

Trees mean a lot to many people and here in Sussex, even after losing three million in the 1987 hurricane, we are still the second most wooded county in England (surprisingly the first is Surrey).

One of the unexpected local best sellers of the past few years was The Sussex Tree Book by Owen Johnson (Pomegranate Press £9.99) which painstakingly lists interesting specimens.

Part of the fascination of trees is that they last longer than we do and can stay around longer than apparently more permanent structures made of brick and stone.

There is a modest and largely hollow elm in the grounds of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton which is older than Prinny's palace.

It has survived war, drought and the threat of Dutch Elm disease to thrive after more than 200 years.

There is a plane tree in the city of London off Cheapside within sight of St Paul's Cathedral, a magnificent specimen even though it is now dwarfed by the faceless office blocks nearby.

No one knows just how old it is but the poet Wordsworth noted it approvingly two centuries ago and it was mature then.

Some of the yews in Sussex churchyards are among the oldest living things on earth.

Several are more than 1,000 years old and some may be approaching double that age. They are vast in girth and sit there as if keeping a watch on the churches close by.

In Kingley Vale, near Chichester, there is one of the finest and oldest yew forests in Europe.

Sussex is still home to other elms besides that famous one in the Pavilion grounds.

Through a fortunate geographic freak, the position of sea and Downs meant that it was partly protected against the little beetle that causes Dutch elm disease.

That means in Brighton and Hove alone, there are more than 30,000 elms which form a kind of living museums.

Trees can be amazingly hardly. Planes like the one I mentioned in London managed to survive all the soot and fumes of Victorian cities. Elms in Sussex have survived close to the coast where the winds can reach 90mph or more.

I noticed during a great gale earlier this month that a magnolia tree, whose blooms looked more delicate than gossamer, lost only a few petals despite the tempest.

Dr Samuel Johnson said: "Brighton is so truly desolate that if one had a mind to hang oneself for desperation at being obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to fasten the rope."

The good doctor would find the resort more congenial and leafy were he to return today.

Wherever you go in Sussex, there are superb trees. The great gardens of the Weald such as Sheffield Park and Wakehurst Place harbour giant redwoods.

There is a famous avenue of Ilex oaks west of Worthing. In the unlikely setting of Buckingham Park at Shoreham there are some sweet chestnut trees which after a warm spring will produce acceptable fruit in the autumn.

I have had my share of trouble with trees. When I was 17, I unwisely pitched a tent with two friends under one with the result that the top half fell down, trapping us.

One of my friends limps to this day as a result of the broken pelvis he suffered. I had to be cut out by the fire brigade but sustained not a scratch.

More recently, while showing my daughter how to use a swing suspended from a tree, the contraption broke and sent me on to the hard ground, landing on my back.

I broke some ribs but was lucky it was not worse. Only last month, a fine elm outside my home in Hove caused subsidence which cost more than £3,000 to repair.

Despite that, I love trees and would love to spend my declining days planting some to help keep Sussex green.

So far, through lack of land, I have put in only two. One is an apple tree in my back garden and the other a horse chestnut in my allotment.

It's much more modest than Michael Heseltine's project but it's nice to know that long after the 50 million words I have written have all been forgotten alone with me, the trees will continue to give people pleasure.