The Woodland Trust thinks that 80% of Britain's ash trees will die from ash dieback, changing the landscape forever and threatening many species that rely on ash. In my lifetime, I have seen the almost complete disappearance of majestic elm trees, and I fear I may witness the same for ash trees.

My artistic process involves finding ways to memorialise these ash trees and bring people's attention to their plight. Out in the landscape, slowly wrapping a dying ash tree in hessian cloth and adding the local clay was cathartic and emotional. In the evening light, the ash leaves' shadows fell on the clay-decorated hessian, creating beautiful patterns that shimmered in the wind.

As monuments to the trees, I make steles, each one as different as the trees they will stand by, rings of clay, rings of life, rings of the tree, each one a year in the life of a tree, each one individual, each one made with my fingers, torn, rolled like bark, pressed, dried and fired into perpetuity. Some are glazed with the wood ash from the stricken ash trees; some are dipped in the black ditch wild clay slip, others fired to bisque to enhance the colours of the earthenware clay rings, one in black to evoke death with rings of white fungus. One in raw clay, alive and hoping for renewal. I photograph the ash trees as a legacy to them.