Woodland Walks - The Woodland Trust Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Join us for a jam-packed visit to Frodsham Woods, Cheshire, where 80 volunteers were planting thousands of trees to help transform a former golf course into a fantastic new space for wildlife and people. We visit the neighbouring ancient woodland and admire hilltop views with site manager Neil and chat to Tim, supervisor of this army of tree planters, about how the new wood will develop. We also meet Esther, lead designer of the project, hear from comms guru Paul about the Trust's #plantmoretrees climate campaign, and speak to the volunteers about what the day means to them.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, today's podcast is a bit of an unusual one because I'm off to an abandoned golf course in Cheshire, overlooking Liverpool. Not far away, in fact. And the vision is to create this once golf course into a thriving mosaic of habitats, including lush broadleaved woodland, grassland meadows and wooded glades dotted with wildflowers. Throughout the site, they're creating a network of grassy paths so people can walk through them and get far-reaching views of the Welsh borders, the western Pennines and the Bowland Fells, along with, of course, Liverpool and the Mersey Estuary. And very excitingly, the man actually who's running all the tree planting there is also in a band, and it's his music and his band's music you can hear in the background. More about that a little later. It's called Frodsham Woods, and it's near the Frodsham train station. Guess where? In Frodsham. Well, today we are starting, I'm starting sitting down with Neil Oxley, who's the site manager here. Hi Neil.

Neil: Good morning, Adam.

Adam: Good morning. So, just explain where we are because we are, well, I'm not gonna take away your thunder. Explain. It's an unusual location.

Neil: So, we’re sat on a bench overlooking the River Mersey and Liverpool. We're on the old golf course that was closed about three years ago.

Adam: Yeah, well that's what I think is unusual – sitting on a golf course. I gotta take, it doesn't look like a golf course. They, the greenkeeper would have had a heart attack seeing the state of this place. But what's amazing is, well, I'm looking over a forest of planted trees. I mean, just within 10 yards, probably a couple of hundred of them, just been planted. So, this has got to be unusual. Take buying a golf course, turning it into a forest?

Neil: It is, yeah. I think it's probably the first golf course that the Woodland Trust has taken on and it's just a great opportunity, though, that when it became available, it's adjoining some of our existing woodlands, including ancient woodland. And it's given us an opportunity to plant lots of trees and work with local people and engage the community in doing something good for the climate.

Adam: And we're sitting down, looking over what might be, I don't know. Is that a bunker? Do you think that’s a bunker?

Neil: It is, yep. So, there there's probably about 40 bunkers on the golf course and we've kept them all, so some of those old features are still here.

Adam: And I saw one, some gorse growing, just naturally growing in the bunker there.

Neil: There is. Just in the two or three years since it stopped being maintained. There's gorse, there's silver birch, there's all sorts of trees and plants that are now appearing.

Adam: I love the gorse. It's bright. It comes out early. Bright yellow. Real splash of colour in early spring. It's really.

Neil: It is, yeah, it's lovely and colourful.

Adam: And we're looking over a range of wind turbines. And is that the Mersey ahead?

Neil: That is, that's the River Mersey.

Adam: Although there’s not much river, it looks, it looks like it’s out. It's mainly mud.

Neil: It’s probably low tide at the moment. Yeah, and Liverpool just beyond the other side.

Adam: Very nice. So, you're going to be my main guide today. We've got lots of people to meet, I know. Alright. Brilliant. So, explain to me the plan for the day.

Neil: So, we're gonna have a walk round and look at some of the tree planting that we've already done here. We've got some groups of corporate volunteers and Woodland Trust staff here today also who are planting trees. So, we'll go and see them later on. But I thought maybe to start off with we could go and visit some of the ancient woodland that borders the site and show you sort of why it's important that we're doing what we're doing today.

Adam: Brilliant. I'm of an age where sitting down is quite nice, but that's not going to get, that's not gonna get nothing made, is it? It's alright. We better get up and you lead on.

Neil: OK, let's go. This lady, by the way, coming with the pug. She's up here all the time. She's really lovely, friendly, always talks to me and Paul. And we've already said hello to her, but he...

Adam: Oh, this dog wants a lot of attention.

Neil: He loves that. He loves that, yeah.

Adam: We'll let the rest of the team pet the dog. You know, you've paused here for a special reason. Why?

Neil: Yeah. So, this area, we're on the edge of the ancient woodland now and the part of the site in front of us is going to be left for what's called natural regeneration to develop. So, that will be where trees can self-seed and set and grow naturally. So, we're not actually planting any trees in this area in front of us. And you can see there's some silver birch trees there that probably self-seeded five or 10 years ago on the edge of the golf course. And they're growing quite well already.

Adam: So, and what's the advantage of that? There's a big debate about rewilding and all of that. So, why has that become an important issue?

Neil: It is, I mean to different people it can mean slightly different things as well. But basically it's leaving the land to develop and rewild itself, you know, for nature to colonise it. It's a slower process.

Adam: So, because if you're planting them yourself, you're planting all the trees at the same time. They're all the same age, so they get wiped out. Everything gets wiped out.

Neil: Potentially yes. You could lose a lot more.

Adam: Actually, I'm surprised those are natural regeneration because they've, it's very regimented. Those silver birch, they've all come up in exactly the same space, very close together. It looks like there's been some thought behind that.

Neil: It does. It does and again nature can do things very similar to how people plant trees. You know, you often can end up with them very densely packed, more densely packed than we're planting them, actually.

Adam: Yeah, OK. Well, we're still surrounded by these young, young trees. So, you lead on. Where are we heading off to?

Neil: So, we're just walking into, towards the ancient woodland area. So, this this is called Woodhouse Hill and it's mostly oak and some silver birch, some holly growing in here, plus a few other species as well.

Adam: And wonderfully of you, you've taken me to the muddiest bit of land there is. Are we going through this?

Neil: This, well, we can do. It's unfortunately because of the winter we've had, some of the paths are very wet and muddy around here now.

Adam: So, I have my walking boots on. You squelch ahead and I’ll squelch behind you.

Neil: OK. We'll carry on then.

Adam: So, we're heading up, give us a better view of the Mersey, a better view of Liverpool.

Neil: That's right. Just around the corner, there's a really good viewpoint where the view will open up and a sunny day like today get quite good views.

Adam: And is it used by the locals a lot? I mean, it's relatively new then. I mean, presumably a lot of locals don't know about it.

Neil: Well, I mean since, the golf course was closed down during the pandemic, and at the time the owner allowed the public to come and walk on the site. So, suddenly from people being not allowed to use it unless they were playing golf, local people were allowed to come and walk the dogs or just walk themselves around with the family. So, people did get to know the site and start using it, but it also borders some existing woodlands with footpaths, which is where we are now. So, these existing woodlands were already well-used.

Adam: Right. And what's the reaction of the locals been to the development here?

Neil: Very positive. Yeah. I mean obviously there's always a fear when a piece of land is up for sale that it might go for some sort of development, housing or be sold to a private landowner who fences it off and stops people using it. So, people have been, yeah, really positive, really supportive. The consultation that we did before we started anything was all very much in favour of creating woodland and allowing public access.

Adam: I think we're coming up to a viewpoint here where there's a bench.

Neil: There is, we should have another sit down.

Adam: And it's very steep here. You wouldn't want to be falling off that, but this is a beautiful view.

Neil: Yeah. The weather today is just great for the view.

Adam: We've been blessed. Look at this. And then you look across a sort of flat valley floor with some wind turbines, which some don’t like but I always think they're really majestic. And beyond the wind turbines, the Mersey, where the tide is out. And beyond that, that's Liverpool. And is that Liverpool Cathedral? The grey building in the sort of middle there.

Neil: That's the main Anglican cathedral, and then the Catholic cathedral is just off to the right and beyond in the far distance is North Wales, so that low line of hills you can see is just within North Wales.

Adam: Oh, that's, those hills over there, beyond the chimneys, that's Wales.

Neil: Beyond the chimneys, yeah.

Adam: And some other lovely gorse and, whoops don't fall over, I thought it was going to be me that would be falling over, not the site manager.

Neil: Mind the rock.

Adam: Ice and sea. So, we've come to the sign. ‘The view from Woodhouse Hill holds clues to the distant past, the Mersey Basin and Cheshire’s sandstone hills were both shaped by advancing ice sheets during the last Ice Age.’ Do you know what? I wanted to say that because I remember from O-level geography, I think a flat-bottomed valley is a glacier-made valley. But I was, I didn't want to appear idiotic, so I didn't say that and I should have had the courage of my convictions. So, this is an ice-formed landscape.

Neil: It is. It is. I understand that the ice sheets came down to this part of the north of England back in the Ice Age. And there's some interesting features that are found here called glacial erratics.

Adam: Right.

Neil: Which is rocks from other parts of the north of England and Scotland that were brought down on the ice sheets. And then when the ice sheets melted, those rocks were left behind. But they're from a different geological area.

Adam: Right. Amazing.

Neil: So, around here it's sandstone. The erratics are all kind of volcanic rocks.

Adam: Brought down from the north, from Scotland.

Neil: Lake District and Scotland. That's right.

Adam: Beautiful. We were with a few other people.

Neil: I think they couldn't be bothered to come through the mud, could they? Yeah.

Adam: We seem to have lost them. OK, alright. Well, maybe we'll have to, we've lost our team, our support team.

Neil: We'll head back, but yeah, no, this was the view I thought we'd come to. Yeah, because it is a nice view.

Adam: Well, I'll tell you what. Let me take a photo of you, for the Woodland Trust social media.

Neil: Thought you were gonna say falling over the rock again. No, no, I'll try not to.

Adam: Yeah, let's not do that. Yeah, so to explain, you're running me across the field for some...

Neil: Walking fast.

Adam: Well, for you walking fast. I've got short legs. Why?

Neil: Well, we've walked over now to where we've got the people who are helping plant trees today with us. So, we've got a mix of corporate volunteers, Woodland Trust staff and some of our volunteers here to help us and we're gonna go over and meet Tim Kerwin, who's in charge of the tree planting and supervising the tree planting with us today.

Adam: Oh right, so these are, this is his army of tree planters.

Neil: It is, yes. Tim keeps things in check and makes sure they're doing the right thing.

Adam: OK. I mean, let's just look, there’s scores of people I’ve no idea of who Tim is.

Neil: Tim? Tim, can we get your attention for a few minutes?

Tim: Yes.

Adam: Hi, nice to see you, Tim.

Tim: I’ve seen you on telly.

Adam: Have you?

Adam: Well, Tim, as well as being in charge of everyone planting the trees today is also the sax player in a band. And of course we have to talk about that first and he very kindly gave me one of his original tracks, which is what you can hear right now. A first for the podcast.

*song plays*

Tim: You know, you know what? We probably do about eight gigs a year, right? But we're trying to find venues where people like jazz. We don't want to, you know, we don't want to do Oasis. That's not what we're about. There's plenty of bands like that. We play music for ourselves, and if people turn up and appreciate it, those are the people we want. I’ll play for one person.

Adam: You know, I was in a wood a few years ago and, can’t remember where it was, and we just came across a violinist, just playing to herself. And it was just like can I record it? And it’s like, just playing amongst the trees, and I thought it was really lovely.

Tim: You know what? I would, I would do the same. I mean, the places I like to play, like churches are fantastic because of the acoustics.

Adam: So, you might play that under this chat and what's the name of the band?

Tim: The Kraken.

Adam: The Kraken?

Tim: Yeah.

Adam: OK. Alright, The Kraken *laughs* So, all of which is a bit of a divergence.

Tim: I know, sorry *laughs*

Adam: So, I'm told you're in charge of this army of tree planters you can see over here. Three men having their sandwich break there. So, you've been working them hard.

Tim: We have been working them hard, indeed.

Adam: So, just explain to me a little bit about what's going on here.

Tim: So, today we can almost see the finishing line for our 30,000 trees. So, this morning we've actually planted just shy of 2,000 trees with the group that we've had, of which there's about 80 people.

Adam: That's a lot of trees. People always talk about how long does it take to plant a tree? It's not that big a thing is it?

Tim: No, but what we're keen about is it's not about necessarily speed, it's about accuracy. We want quality. So, what we're asking people to do is plant each tree really well. So, today I have to say the standard of planting has been amazing. From the first to the last, I haven't found one that I'm not happy with.

Adam: So, explain to me, and we're standing by a tree that's just been planted. It looks like they've scraped a bit of the grass away. So, explain to me, how should you plant a tree and what goes wrong?

Tim: OK, so what we've done here, we took the grass off before the guys came, so that's called scriefing. So, the purpose of that is the tree needs water. And this grass also needs water. So, we take that grass away, and the competition's gone away for the tree. So, it won't be forever, because within two years, that grass will have grown around that tree. But those first two years are quite critical. So, if we can get the new roots from, so those trees and little plugs, new roots which are going to come out in the next couple of weeks because the soil's warming up. I mean, the air's warming up, but the soil’s warming up. Those will send out shoots. They're already starting to come in to leaf, which is why the urgency to get these trees in now. They will take in the water around them and then keep on spreading with that root system. Enough root system will go out there and it will then not be competing with the grass because in fact the tree will be competing with the grass and actually taking over. So, eventually that grass will probably die because it will be shaded out in the future.

Adam: And talking about shade, I'm surprised how closely planted these are, about five foot apart or thereabouts. If this was a forest in 20 years’, 30 years’ time, it's exceptionally dense. Or are you expecting a lot of them to fail?

Tim: So, imagine you've got an oak tree and that throws down 40,000 acorns in usually every four years. So, it doubles its weight above ground.

Adam: Sorry, 40,000?

Tim: 40,000. A mature oak, yeah.

Adam: It’s worth pausing on that *laughs* A mature oak drops 40,000 acorns a year?

Tim: Every four years, roughly.

Adam: Because it doesn't do it every year, do they?

Tim: No. So, it has what they call a mast year, which is the year when everything's come together. It's usually based on the previous weather, weather conditions. So, that doubles the weight of the tree above ground, that throws all those acorns. Now you imagine they're gonna be a couple of centimetres apart on the ground. They're not all going to make it. What they're hoping is that something will take those away. So, a jay or a squirrel, they'll move those acorns away. Not all of them will get eaten. In fact, jays let the acorn germinate, and then they eat the remains. So, they wait to see where the oak tree comes up and then they come back and eat the remains of the cotyledon. So, you imagine if all those were going to germinate, there'd be a mass rush, and what they're waiting for is for the parent plant to die. And if that falls over, then they can all shoot up, but they're not all going to survive. So maybe only one, maybe two will survive out of those 40,000 if they're close to the tree. Now, what we're doing here is, imagine there’s the parent plant, the parent plant's not here. We've already spaced these out by this distance already. So, we've given them a better chance. So, they can now flourish. In time, so within sort of 10 to 12 years, we're going to start to be sending this out. So, you won't see this line. There are other parts on this site, 23 years old, and we've done a lot of filling through that. You wouldn't know it's been planted by, in a plantation.

Adam: So, what would you, what's the failure rate? What's a good failure rate to stay with?

Tim: It can really, really vary. I have to say that the soil here is tremendous. It's very rich. I'd be very surprised if we have a high failure rate. It could be 95% take.

Adam: So, that's really interesting. And what are you planting then? I've seen some oak. I've seen some silver birch. What are you planting?

Tim: So, Cheshire is all about oak and birch. So, 25% of these trees, so 7,500 are oak. And then 10% are silver birch. So that's 3,000. And then there's another 18 species that are all native to the UK that we're planting in here. So, things like rowan, holly, Scots pine and then we've got hazel, some large areas of hazel on this site that we've put in and then we've got hawthorn, blackthorn, couple of types of cherry, and then some interesting ones as well. So, we're putting some elm in and, specifically for a butterfly. So, there's a butterfly called white letter hairstreak. And the caterpillar feeds on the leaves of that tree. So, we've got those in Cheshire, but we're trying to expand it. And we've been working with the Butterfly Conservation group to get it right. So, they've given us some advice.

Adam: I thought elm was a real problem with the Dutch elm disease?

Tim: It still is. It still is.

Adam: There was some talk that maybe some had found some natural resistance to Dutch elm disease.

Tim: There are some resistant elm. And so, the plantings that we've done on here are what's classed as wych elm. It will still get Dutch elm disease, but it can last up to 16 years. And then there's always the opportunity to replant so we can get elm established. Then we can carry on spreading that through the site, so it's a starting point for that species we have. So again, we're trying to increase the biodiversity of the site by having specific trees for specific species. So, it's exciting. I mean, a lot's been lost and it won't become a beautiful wildflower meadow, although we are going to be doing some wildflower planting. We've already bought the seed. And in the next couple of weeks as it gets a little bit drier and a little bit warm, we're going to be, we're going to be sowing that in and that will come through the spring and summer. So, we've got lots to happen here as well.

Adam: Oh brilliant. Well, it's so nice to see it at an early stage. I’ll come back in a couple of years.

Tim: It’s probably one of the most exciting projects, tree wise, in Cheshire in a long time, because I've been doing this for a long, long time and these opportunities don't come up. So, for this to happen. And for the size of it as well. I mean, you're talking about a huge area of woodland now, over 180 acres. So, the second biggest area of woodland in Cheshire, so it's amazing. It truly is amazing.

Adam: Well, I'm walking away. In fact, all tree planting has stopped for lunch. What is the time? Yeah, it's 12:45. So, everyone has stopped for sandwiches and teas, and they're spreading branches of some trees. And while they're doing that, two people are still working. That's me. And Paul? Hi.

Paul: Hi.

Adam: So, just explain to me what you do, Paul?

Paul: I work as the comms and engagement manager for the north of England, so this is one of the best tree planting games we have had in a long time.

Adam: And the people we've got here today, they’re just locals? They from any particular groups?

Paul: No, the Woodland Trust staff as part of our climate campaign now get a day to come out and we've got various corporate volunteering groups out also planters. We've got about 80 people out planting today.

Adam: Well, that's amazing and we've just paused by this gorse bush. I'm rather partial to the gorse, so we’ll take some shelter there. So, you talked about that this is part of a bigger campaign. What is that campaign?

Paul: It’s our climate campaign. And very simple hashtag plant more trees. So, trees are one, probably one of the best things we've got in the battle against climate change to help. And they have the added benefit that also they're good for biodiversity as well. So, twin track approach if you plant a tree. Obviously they're not the solution to everything, but we're hoping, as the Woodland Trust just to get more people planting trees.

Adam: What is the target then? The sort of tree planting target you have?

Paul: Well we have a target to get 50 million trees planted by 2030. Across all of the UK, so quite, quite a number.

Adam: 50 million trees by 2030, so six years?

Paul: Yeah, yeah. And we've, I think we've planted 6 million trees, 2023, yeah.

Adam: Why is everyone taking a break? They’ve got millions to get in. That's quite an ambitious thing to get done, isn't it?

Paul: Yeah. And we need, we need to plant billions of trees longer term. So, it's really important we get everyone planting trees, but it's all that message as well, right tree in the right place, and get trees planted where they’re needed.

Adam: And this is an unusual project, not least cause it's on an old golf course, which I've never heard of before. Has it attracted much interest? Is there a lot of engagement from the media and the public?

Paul: Yeah, this site has had a remarkable amount of attention from the press. It started with local radio, then regional TV and then we've had things like Sky News Climate Show out here and then even international press coverage looking at rewilding of golf courses. CNN covered it alongside international golf courses and here in the UK, Frodsham. So, it's been amazing how it's captured everyone's imagination and it's been such a really positive good news story. It's a site that's a key site within the Northern Forest. So, the Northern Forest is another project that I’m involved with in the north of England, but.

Adam: Did you say a little project? *laughs*

Paul: Another, another project.

Adam: Oh sorry. I was gonna say, a massive project.

Paul: That’s a massive project, which is again stretching, looking to plant 50 million trees from Liverpool to Hull and we're working with the Community Forests in each area, in this case the Mersey Forest and again just promoting grants and support to landowners and communities to get more, more trees planted and to help acquire land for tree planting and give the grants for tree planting.

Adam: It must give you a warm feeling that your communications are actually being so well received that there is, it's not just you pushing out a message, that people want to hear this message.

Paul: Yeah, it's really, really good to not have a negative message. Generally it's a really, really positive message that people wanted to hear because it's great for the community. They're getting some amazing green space with stunning views of the Mersey on the doorstep. It's interesting story about how we're changing from a golf course to a woodland site. We've got the ancient woodland, got natural regeneration. And just the fact that everyone's smiling, everyone's really happy and just so pleased that they're playing their small part in helping us create this new woodland site. Just great to be part of that, that positive good news story.

Adam: Well, I'm going over to a group of people who have been busy planting all day but are now on their lunch break, just to bother them and ask them how their day has been and why they got involved in this.

Adam: OK, well, you can, first of all, you can just shout out so, well we've, you all are hard at work I hear, but I've seen very little evidence of it cause everyone’s sat down for lunch now. Have you all had a good day?

Everyone: Yes.

Adam: That would have been awful had they said no. Anyway, they all had a good day. So, I mean, it's lovely that you're out. You're all out here doing, I mean, very serious work. You've all got smiles on your face and everything. But this is important. I wonder why anyone's getting involved, what it means to you. Anyone got a view or get a microphone to you?

Adam: So, what's your name?

Volunteer 1: Rodon.

Adam: Rodon. So, why are you here?

Rodon: Well, nature, wildlife, planting, and I know the area quite well, so it's nice to see being developed in a sustainable way and being something for nature. It's a great place to come and visit, not far from the sandstone trail. I visit lots of Woodland Trust sites. I live in Warrington so it's sort of down the road, and it's, as I say, with the old wood over there that's quite an adventurous path. It's got lots of like sandstone sort of steps and little caves, and it's on the side of a cliff. So, this has kind of extended that over here as well.

Adam: It would be a lovely thing to return to in a few years.

Rodon: Well, it's a nice place now to be honest.

Adam: Brilliant.

Volunteer 2: My name is David Mays. I'm also from the from the town of Warrington as well. I'm an MSC and BSc student from local Hope University. I've finished both of them now, thankfully. I'm trying to get a job in the ecological management sector and I feel doing this working with people like Tim and Neil will help me massively get a, you know, it looks good on my CV. Most importantly, I really enjoy being out here and getting to know how the areas of ecological development, particularly in the woodland industry, is developing over the past few years and what are the plans for the future and what they hope to achieve in the long term and short term.

Adam: That's very good. So, it's also very innovative of you putting out your CV live on air there. Good. Hopefully someone needing a job, with a job to offer will contact us. Good luck with that. So, oh yeah, we've come under another lovely tree. I mean it looks set. I was just saying to Kerry, it's so beautiful here. It looks like we've set this shot up. Really, you know? But here you are with your spades behind you taking a break from the trunk. So, first of all, have you, has it been a good day?

Volunteer 3: Yeah. Yeah, it has been. It’s been dry.

Adam: It's been dry. OK. Alright. Well, let's get, so, the best thing about today is that it was dry.

Volunteer 3: It's one of the positive points. Definitely. Yeah, after the trees.

Adam: Yeah, with experience. So, why did you want to come out? What made you want to be part of this?

Volunteer 3: Well, I think it's because we are having a bit of a push with the climate change agenda at the moment, so it's, working for the Woodland Trust it's just a nice opportunity to get away from the sort of the day job for me and get out into the field and actually do something practical and help towards that.

Adam: Yeah. Did, I mean, has it been very physical for you today, has it?

Volunteer 3: It's not been too bad, actually. It's been fine. Yeah. No, it's been OK. Ask me tomorrow, but yeah *laughs*

Adam: Have you done this sort of stuff before?

Volunteer 3: No, this is my first, this is my first planting day with the Trust.

Adam: Yeah, and your last?

Volunteer 3: No, no, I'll definitely no, it hasn't put me off. We'll definitely, definitely be back out again when I get the opportunity. It's been great.

Adam: So, go on. Tell me what's all been like for you today?

Volunteer 4: It’s been really good. Yeah. I just can't believe we've covered so much ground in so little time, really. Seems we've only been here a few hours and because it's, I've been quite remote working from home, so it's quite nice kind of seeing some people I've met on screen, so it's nice to now, yeah, meet people in the real world and yeah, give back. I've never, I've not done anything like this before.

Adam: So yeah, so is this your first time planting trees?

Volunteer 5: It's not my first time planting trees, but it's my first time planting with the Trust. I was planting trees in my garden on the weekend, so I’ve done my back in. So, I've not quite got the planting rate of everyone else today I don't think, but you know, as the other guys were saying, we work office jobs really rather than on the front line of the Trust. So, it is good to get our hands dirty and to get involved with what we're supposed to be all about and contribute to our climate change campaign. So, hashtag plant more trees.

Adam: Yeah. There we are, on message as well.

Volunteer 5: I work in the brand team *laughs*

Adam: There we are. There we are. Thank you. That's excellent.

Adam: Now, really I should have started with this because we're nearing the end of my morning in the forest. But I've come to meet Esther, who's really one of the big brains behind the planting scheme. I know a bit modest about that, but tell me a little bit about what your involvement has been with this project.

Esther: I've been a lead designer on this project, so I've been putting together the planting plans and lots of maps and really working with Neil, he's the site manager, to make sure that we make this the best scheme that we can make it. We've included coppice coupes for biodiversity and.

Adam: Right, what's a coppice coupe?

Esther: A coppice coupe is just an area of where you're planning to coppice. So, cut a tree down to its very base and then it grows back up as shoots. So, it only works with a few species and the species that we've chosen is hazel. So, those areas are 100% hazel. And it's great for biodiversity because you sort of go in a rotational like a 10-year cycle or something like that and you cut back say 10% of your trees in that year and then you get a lot of light to the ground and then you get hopefully a lot of floristic diversity coming through.

Adam: And so, is that a job that, it sounds terrible the way I'm saying it – is that a job? Is it a job that you sit down and you go, you have a piece of paper or computer and you go, this is where we're, how we're gonna design the forest. We're gonna put ash over there. We're gonna put oak over there. Is that what you do?

Esther: Yeah. Yeah. So, we use something called GIS. So, geographical information systems which basically let you draw shapes on a map and then you can colour code it and basically make a really coherent design of something to tell people, you know, what you're trying to achieve. What's gonna go where.

Adam: And it's not every, it's not like building an extension to a house where you go well, there's probably thousands and going on all the time. There can't be that many forests being planted each day, so this must be a significant thing in your career I would have thought.

Esther: Oh yeah, this is my first woodland creation scheme that I've seen from pretty much the start to the finish, so I've been working on it for 18 months and then an awful lot of hours gone into it. It's been really enjoyable and it's just a wonderful, wonderful to see it coming together. And yeah, and we're nearly finished now, so.

Adam: And I know people often think, oh well, I'll come back in 100 years’ time and you know, my great grandchildren might see these trees. But actually, within your career, you will see a forest here won't you.

Esther: Yeah. So, I think within 10 years it will look like a woodland. It's had, this site has a history of agriculture, so it should in theory have a lot of nutrients in the soil. So, the trees should grow really well. So yeah, I would say within 10 to 15 years, it should look like fully fledged woodland, if not a bit young, but yeah.

Adam: And are you optimistic about really the change that you and your colleagues can make? Cause there's a lot of pessimism around. What's your view?

Esther: I think it's a really exciting time to be working in the environment sector and there's a lot of enthusiasm for making big changes in our lives and big changes in our landscape. I think there's a lot of hope to be had. And yeah, just seeing like the amount of enthusiasm on a planting day like this really fills me with a great deal of hope, yeah.

Adam: Yeah. Have you planted any trees yourself?

Esther: I have, yeah.

Adam: How many of these have been yours, you reckon?

Esther: We have 15, probably not that many *laughs*

Adam: Oh, that's not bad. I thought you were gonna be like The Queen. I planted one. There was a round of applause and I went home *laughs*

Esther: No, I put a lot of guards on, but yeah, not planting that many trees myself.

Adam: Fantastic. Well, it's been a great day for me. Our half day out here and I'll definitely return. It's amazing, amazing, positive place.

Esther: Wonderful, yeah.

Adam: And the sun has shone on us. Metaphorical smile from the sun. Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Esther: Thank you so much.

*song plays*

Adam: Well, if you want to find a wood near you, you can do so by going to The Woodland Trust website which is www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Until next time, happy wandering.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special. Or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Our setting for this episode, Sheffield’s Endcliffe Park seems like many other popular green spaces, but it has a hidden history: its waterways once helped fuel the Industrial Revolution in the ‘Steel City’. We discover how Sheffield’s past intertwines with trees as local urban forester, Catherine Nuttgens, explains how nature and the city have shaped each other through the centuries, and why people here are so passionate about trees. We also meet Stella Bolam who works with community groups and schools to plant trees, and learn about the nearby Grey to Green project that’s transformed tarmac into a tranquil haven for people and wildlife and tackles climate change too.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people, for wildlife. 

Adam: Well, today I am in Sheffield, known of course as the Steel City renowned for steel production during the 19th century Industrial Revolution. But despite that historical heritage, woodland and green spaces were, and still are, the lungs of the city and seen as vitally important. In fact, it is now, according to Sheffield University, the UK's greenest city, with 250 public parks and over four and a half million trees. That's more trees per person than any other city in Europe and in 2022, Sheffield was named as a Tree City of the World. And I'm meeting Catherine Nuttgens at Endcliffe Park. That's a 15 hectare open space opened in 1887 to commemorate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. And interestingly, it isn’t in the middle of the countryside; it is two miles from the city centre, the first in a series of connected green spaces, known collectively as Porter Valley Parks, all of which lie along the course of the Porter Brook. Well, although it really is coming to spring, we've been hit with some rather unseasonable snow, and I thought we were going to start with some snow sound effects, but actually this is a very fast-moving river that I'm standing by and I am meeting Catherine. Hello. So, Catherine, just explain a bit about who you are first of all. 

Catherine: OK. Yes, I'm Catherine Nuttgens. I used to be the urban lead for the Woodland Trust, but I've just moved into independent work as an urban forester, an independent urban forester. 

Adam: Fantastic. And you have. We've arranged to meet by this. I was gonna say babbling brook. It's really much more than that, isn't it? So is this the river? The local river. 

Catherine: This is the River Porter, so this is one of five rivers in Sheffield. And it runs all the way up the Porter Valley, which is where we're going to be walking today. 

Adam: Let's head off. So I have no idea where I'm going. 

Catherine: Going that way. OK, yes, let's go. Let's go this way.  

Adam: OK. You sound already confused. 

Catherine: I was going to look at that. I was going to look at that tree over there. Cause we planted it. Is it still alive? 

Adam: We can go have a look at that. It’s still alive. 

Catherine: Which tree? This tree? Here it's just so a total aside for everything that we're doing. 

Adam: We're already getting sidetracked. You see, if a tree was planted. 

Catherine: So yeah, I mean, this was one of... my old role at Sheffield Council was being community forestry manager and our role was to plant trees around the city. So one of the things that we planted were these War Memorial trees and it's very hard if you plant a tree to not go back to it and say, how's it doing? Is it OK? This is it, it's looking OK. 

Adam: This looks more than OK and also it's still got three poppy wreaths on it from Remembrance Sunday. And a dedication, lest we forget: to all the brave men and women of Sheffield who gave their lives and those who hereafter continue to give in pursuit of freedom and peace. 2018 it was planted. 

Catherine: One of the reasons I want to check it: it's quite a challenging place to plant a tree as there's an awful lot of football here. So the ground is really compacted, I think it's a red oak.  

Adam: A red oak. 

Catherine: That should be the right tree for this place. When they go in, they need so much water and it's 60 litres of water a week when it's dry, so keeping them alive, especially when the ground is so compacted is quite a challenge. It's something that happens all around the country is that people think ‘I've planted a tree and now I can walk away’. But actually the real work goes into sort of making sure trees have got enough water. So that they can, you know, for at least the first sort of two or three years of planting. So that they can survive to the good. 

Adam: Brilliant. Alright. Well, look, we've already got distracted. We we've, we haven't even started. We've gone the wrong direction. But anyway, your oak is doing very well indeed.  

Catherine: I'm sorry. It's it's, it's good. 

Adam: So tell me a little bit about where we're going and why, why you've taken me on this particular trip. 

Catherine: Sheffield is actually the most wooded, well, it's the most treed and wooded city in Europe. There are more trees per head in Sheffield than there are in any other city in Europe. So I thought the Porter Valley is quite good because there's quite a lot of cafés on the way. So that's quite good. But also it was a great way of describing about how the, how the landscape of Sheffield has kind of shaped the city and how how kind of people are shaped by the landscape also. The landscape is, you know, is is shaped by the people and, and here's a real case in point, because although it all looks very beautiful now and as we go up the valley  you’ll see, you know it, it gets more rural. Actually it's all artificial. This is a post-industrial landscape. 

Adam: So I mean when you say that, I mean this is this is a creative landscape this, so that I don't really understand what you mean. I mean they didn't knock, you didn't knock down factories. This must have been natural ground. 

Catherine: Well, it was natural, but basically Sheffield started Sheffield famous for iron and steel, and it's also on the edge of the Peak District. So there's there's these five very fast flowing rivers that actually provided the power for the grinding holes are places where they made blades and scissors and scythes and all these different things. And so along rivers like this one, there were what were called the like, grinding hulls, the little factories where they they use the the power of the water to sharpen those blades and to you know, to forge them and things. As we go further up, we'll start to see how the Porter kind of has been sort of sectioned off. It's been chopped up and made into ponds. There's what we call goits that go off and they would have been the little streams that go off and power each, each grinding hull along here. 

Adam: I mean you you say Sheffield is the most wooded city in the UK per head, and yet it hit the headlines a few years ago when the council started chopping down trees. And it wasn't entirely clear why, but the the local population were up in arms. So why was that? Is was that an aberration, or was that a change in policy?  

Catherine 

No, I mean people call Sheffield, the outdoor city. People in Sheffield have always been really connected to their trees. But I think when we got to the, you know, for the street tree protest, you know, the vision was beautiful, flat pavements and there were just these annoying trees in the way that were lifting all the paving slabs and everything. We thought what we need is lovely flat pavements, all the people that are complaining about trees all the time, they'll be really happy. But obviously that wasn't the case because people actually do quite like the trees. So what happened here was that the the council decided to send to send a crew to fell in the middle of the night, and then so they knocked on. Yeah. It was, yeah, honestly. Yeah, it was mad so. The the policemen came, knocked on people's doors, said ‘sorry, can you move your cars? Because we want to cut down the trees.’ And now obviously if a policeman knocks on your door in the middle of the night, you know, it's it's pretty scary. So the ladies that they did that to said no, I think I'm going to sit under this tree instead. And it was just mad. Just think, what are they doing? Because it was in the Guardian, like the morning, it got international by the sort of lunchtime. And it was if, if you wanted a way to create an international protest movement about trees, so that's the way to do it. So. But I mean, that was the thing Sheffield is, so it's not an affluent city, but people do stuff in Sheffield, you know, something's happened, someone's doing a thing about it, and they're really good at organising. And in the end, thank goodness the council stopped. If there are things going on in your city, dialogue is always the best way, and consulting and co-designing with the public is so important because it's that's what these trees are for. They're here to benefit people. So if you're not discussing kind of the plans with the people then you know, it's not it's you're not properly doing your job, really. 

Adam: And you said there's lots of choice of places to go with trees in and around Sheffield. And the reason you've chosen this particular place is why? Why does this stand out? 

Catherine: Well, I think I mean, first of all, it's quite it it, it is a beautiful valley that's kind of very accessible. We've got, I mean here the kind of manufactured you know the Porter has been Victorianised, it's all got these lovely little rills and things. Little rills. You know where little rills kind of maybe that's the wrong word, but the kind of. 

Adam: No, but I do. Teaching me so many new words. So what is the rill? 

Catherine: So you know, just kind of little bits in the the stream where they've made it, you know, kind of little rocks and things. 

Adam: Like rocks. Yeah, that is beautiful. They're like tiny little waterfalls. It's wonderful. I love it. 

Catherine: So here for example, I mean looks lovely like these ponds that we have. I mean there's always there's things like the, the kingfishers and and there's the kind of Endcliffe Park Heron that everyone takes pictures of. And there are often Mandarin ducks. I think we passed some Mandarin ducks earlier on, didn't we? But this is actually. This is a holding pool for what would have sort of, how would the grinding hull that now has gone. So it's actually a piece of industrial heritage. Yeah, it looks, I mean, it has now all been kind of made nice. In the ‘30s some of these pools were were kind of put over to and probably in Victorian times as well. They're actually swimming areas. They converted them into swimming. 

Adam: I mean the water, I mean, you can't see this if you're listening, but water's super muddy or or brown. It's not appealing to swim in, I’ll just say, but OK, no, no one does that these days. 

Catherine: No. Well, they they do up at Crookes, actually. There are people going swimming that that's a, that's a fishing lake. So it's much deeper, but it's a little bit. 

Adam: Are you a wild swimmer?  

Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. Let's go out into the peak a bit more and out into the the lovely bit. 

Adam: Ohh wow, you said that's the way to. I mean, I can't get into a swimming pool unless it’s bath temperature, let alone. 

Catherine: It's lovely in the summer. I'm not a cold swimmer, right? But I do love it in in the summer. It's not. I mean, that's what's great about Sheffield, really. And that, like, there's so much nature just within sort of 20 minutes’ walk. I mean, some people just get on their bike and go out into the peak and whether it's you're a climber or a wild swimmer or a runner or just a walker, or you just like beautiful things. You know? It's it's it's kind of here. 

Adam: And there is an extraordinary amount of water, I mean. It's, I mean, you probably can hear this, but there seems to be river on all sides of us. It's so we've been walking up the Porter Brook, which you can hear in the background and we've come across Shepherd Wheel a water powered grinding hull last worked in the 1930s. 

Catherine: Come this way a little bit. You can see the there's the wheel that they've put together. So inside. I'm just wondering whether we can through a window we can look in. But so so Sheffield say a very independent sort of a place. The what used to happen is the the little mesters there were they hired. They were men.  

Adam: Sorry that's another word. What was a mester? 

Catherine: That is another word. A mester. That is. I mean. So I think it was like a little master, so like a master cutler or whatever. A little master. But but in in there there were there were individual grinding grindstones right with the benches, the grinding benches on and they hired a bench to do their own piece work. So so it was very independent, everyone was self-employed and you know they they. So the wheel actually sort of was important for probably quite a few livelihoods. 

Adam: We’ve come up to a big sign ‘Shepherd’s Wheel in the Porter Valley’. Well, look at this. Turn the wheel to find out more. Select. Oh, no idea what's going. You hold on a sec. Absolutely nothing. It's it's it's, it's, it's, it's a local joke to make tourists look idiotic. Look, there's another nutter just turning a wheel. That does nothing. 

Catherine: And actually an interesting well timber fact is that up in North Sheffield there's a wood called Woolley Wood there and all the trees were a lot of the trees are hornbeam trees. Now hornbeam is really good, as its name might suggest, because it it was used to make make the cogs for for for kind of structures like this, because the the wood was so very hard and also it was quite waterproof. There's actually when the wheel bits were replaced here they used oak. But one of the I think one of the problems with oak is that it's got lots of tannins in that can actually rot the iron work. So so actually. There’s kind of knowledge that's been lost about how to use timber in an industrial way and and. 

Adam: So if you happen to be building a water wheel, hornbeam is, your go-to wood. I'm sure there's not many people out there building water wheels, but you know very useful information if you are. All right, you better lead on. 

Catherine: I think we can head unless you want to go, won't go down that way or go along along here much. There we go. We'll cross. We'll go this way. I think. Probably go down here. Yeah, this has got a great name, this road. It's Hanging Water Road, which I'm not sure I would think. It must be a big waterfall somewhere. I'm not sure whether there is one right so. It's just a a good name. So yeah, so this is more I think going into more kind of established woodland. Still see we've got the two rivers here. 

Adam: So tell me about where we're heading off to now. 

Catherine: We're going up into. I think there's a certainly Whitley Woods is up this way and there's one called Bluebell Woods, which would indicate you know, ancient... bluebells are an ancient woodland indicator, and so that would suggest that actually these are the bits where the trees have been here for much a much longer time. I think there's still kind of one of the things that they try and do in Sheffield, is kind of bring the woods back into traditional woodland management, where you would have had something with called coppice with standards. So the coppice wood was cut down for charcoal burning cause. So the charcoal, these woods, all these many, many woods across Sheffield fuelled all this steel work. You know they need. That was the the heat that they needed. So charcoal burning was quite a big industry. And and the other thing is that's good for us is that actually having kind of areas of open woodlands, you know, open glades and things, it's really, really good for biodiversity because you have that edge effect and you know, opens up to woodland butterflies and things like that. 

Adam: We're just passing an amazing house built on stilts on the side side of this hill, which has got this great view of the river. 

Catherine: There's. Yeah, there's some incredible houses around here. 

Adam: Where? Where so which where are we heading? 

Catherine: We'll go back down that way. 

Adam: OK. All right. You may be able to hear it's not just the river, it is now raining. And actually it's all making the snow a bit slushy, but we're on our way back. We're going to meet a colleague of yours. Is that right? 

Catherine: That's right. Yeah. So Stella Bolam, who. She's a community forestry officer who works for Sheffield City Council. She's going to be joining us. And yeah, she worked with me when I was working for the council and is in charge of planting trees with communities across Sheffield. 

Adam: OK, so Stella, hi. So, yeah, so. Well, thank you very much for joining me on this rather wet day on the outskirts of Sheffield. So just tell me a little bit about what you do. 

Stella: Yeah, of course. So our team, community forestry, we basically plant trees with people. It's our tagline, I suppose, and so we we work with community groups and schools to plant those trees and provide aftercare in the first three years, two-three years. 

Adam: Aftercare for the trees. Yeah, yeah. 

Stella: Yes. Ohh obviously for the people as well I mean. 

Adam: What sort of? Give me an example of the type of people you're working with and what you're actually achieving. 

Stella: Yeah, yeah. So I can tell you about a couple of projects I did. When I first joined a couple of years ago. So one was in an area called Lowedges, which is quite a deprived area of Sheffield. In the south of Sheffield. And we worked with a couple of local groups that were already formed to build, to plant a hedge line through the park. It's quite long. It's about 2000 whips we planted, and we also worked with a group called Kids Plant Trees, who advocate nature-based activities for children, which obviously includes planting trees, and we work with a couple of local schools. So we map all the trees that we plant and so for our records.  

Adam: And how did you get involved in all of this? 

Stella: I a couple of years ago I changed careers.  

Adam: You were a journalist. Is that right? 

Stella: I was a journalist. Yeah.  

Adam: What sort of journalist? 

Stella: I did print journalism and that.  

Adam: Local through the local newspapers? 

Stella: No, I worked in London for at least 10 years. I worked in London. I moved up to Sheffield and I was a copywriter. 

Adam: Right. So a very different world. So it wasn't wasn't about nature. You weren't. You weren't the environment correspondent or anything. 

Stella: It was very different. No, no, not at all. It's human interest stories, though. So I've always been interested in in people and communities, and that that's the thing that I've tried to embed in my work in forestry as well and trying to sort of help people connect to nature and understand that that connection a bit more. 

Adam: You've moved around the country and we've been talking about how important trees are to people in Sheffield in particular. Is that true? Is that your experience, that it is different here? 

Stella: Yes, they’re very passionate about trees and that can go either way. So you know there's people that love them and people that are actually quite scared of them.  

Adam: Scared? Why? Why scared? 

Stella: Yeah, I think because a lot of people don't understand trees and they think they're going to fall over. They say things like, oh, look at, it's moving in the wind. And I sort of say, well, that's natural, that's how they grow, right? But obviously I wasn't taught that at school. So people don't have that general understanding about trees. So I try to sort of, I suppose, gently educate people if they do say negative things. Because I obviously do love trees and you know, I think they give us so much,  

Adam: And you said you work with a lot of schools. 

Stella: Yeah. 

Adam: Do you feel young people have a particularly different view of nature and trees than older generations? Do you see any distinction there at all? 

Stella: Yes, I think though, because of the climate emergency we're in, I think kids now are much more attuned with what's going on with you know, are the changes that are happening in our climate. So we do incorporate a little bit of education in our work with schools. So we talk to them about trees, why they're important, and we'll often let them answer. We won't tell them they'll put up their hands and say, well, because they give us oxygen or, you know, the animals need them. So I didn't know anything about that when I was at school. So I think that's probably quite a major change. 

Adam: You must know the area quite well, and there's lots of different parts of woodlands in and around Sheffield, so for those who are visiting, apart from this bit, where would you recommend? What's your favourite bits? 

Stella: Ohh well I I like the woods near me actually. So I I live in an area called Gleadless and Heely and there's there's Gleadless have have got various woodlands there. They're ancient woodlands and they're not very well known, but they’re absolutely amazing. But the other famous one in Sheffield is Ecclesall Woods. Yes, it's very famous here. It's kind of the flagship ancient woodland. It's the biggest one in South Yorkshire. 

Adam: And you talked about getting into this industry in this career, you're both our our experts, both women that that is unusual. Most of the people I I meet working in this industry are men. Is that first of all is that true and is that changing? 

Stella: It is true. Yeah, I think it's currently about I'm. I'm also a board member and trustee of the Arboricultural Association, so I know some of these statistics around the membership of that organisation and I think there's. It's between about 11 and 15% of their members are women. So yes, it is male and it's also not very ethnically diverse either. I think it is changing and I think I can see that sometimes even when I'm working with kids. And you know, young girls who are you can see they're like really interested. And I sort of always say to them, you know, you can do, you can work with trees when you when you're grown up, you can have a job working with trees. And like a lot of sectors, I think traditionally men have dominated. And I think a lot of women sort of self-select themselves, edit them out of their options, really, cause you you're not told about these things. I mean, I'd never heard of arboriculture five years ago. 

Adam: We've we've just rejoined the riverbank. It's quite wide. So this is the Porters River? Porter Brook been told that so many times today I keep forgetting that the Porter River, no didn't quite get it right. Porter Brook. Is it normally this high? I mean it's properly going fast, isn't it? Think that’s amazing. 

Stella: Yeah. So I was going to just have a chat with you a little bit about a project called Eat Trees Sheffield. 

Adam: Yes, OK. 

Stella: Yeah. So this is a project that was initiated by an organisation called Regather Cooperative, but they also are massive advocates of supporting a local sustainable food system and as part of that, it's harvesting apples. And they make a beautiful pasteurised apple juice from apples locally. 

Adam: From an actual planted orchard? 

Stella: No so well, they actually have just planted an orchard, but no, they basically accept donations from the community. 

Adam: So if someone's got an apple tree in their garden. They they pull off the apples and send it in. 

Stella: Yeah, well, they have to bring them in. Yeah. And they have to be in a certain condition that they're good for juicing, but yes. And then they get a proportion of the juice back the the people that have donated get some juice back.  

Adam: A fantastic idea. Fantastic.  

Stella: Yeah. And then they obviously sell the juice as part of their more commercial offering. But yeah. 

Adam: That's wonderful. So if you, if you've got a couple of apple trees in your garden, and you live around the Sheffield area, what's the the name of the charity? 

Stella: It's called Regather Cooperative. So, we're trying to create a network of people that, basically, can be connected to each other and build skills to look after these orchards because they do need looking after and valuing. They're very important, so yeah. 

Adam: Yeah, sort of connects people to their very local trees. It's interesting. I have a a very good friend of mine in London. Who does sort of guerilla gardening. And on the the street trees has just planted runner beans and things coming up so so you know it just grows up. You can see people walking down and going oh, are those beans hanging off the trees? and you she you know, just pops out and grabs some and goes and cooks with them. And you know I'm not. I always think. I'm not sure I'd want to eat some some stuff from this street tree because God knows how. What happens there? But I I love the idea. I think it's a really fun idea. 

Stella: So it's just it's been nice meeting you. 

Adam: Well, same here. So we're back, we're back by the river. 

Catherine: By the river all along the river.  

Adam: All along, so yes. Final thoughts?  

Catherine: Yeah. So I mean, it's been so great to have, you know, have you visit Sheffield today, Adam. Like, it's always such a privilege to to show people around kind of the bits of our city that are so beautiful. Well, I think, you know, just this walk today in the Porter Valley and the fact that there's so many trees where there used to be industry is something that Sheffield's had going for it I think throughout the whole of its history. The the woodlands were originally so important to be the green lungs of the city - that was really recognised at the turn of the 20th century. But now if you go into the city centre, there's projects like Grey to Green, which is basically where they used to be a very, rather ugly road running round the back of the city centre, which has now been converted into 1.5 kilometres of active travel routes, and there the space has been made for trees. So instead of roads now there's kind of special soil and trees and plants and grasses and things like that. They're like, they look amazing, but also they help to combat climate change. So when the rains fall like they have done at the moment, the trees slow down all the flow of the water going into the River Don, it stops Rotherham from flooding further down. But it also helps well it also encourages people to visit the city centre and enjoy the shade of the trees and, you know, takes up some of the pollution that's in the city. And I think it's, you know, this kind of new kind of thinking where we're actually not just looking after the woods we've already got and letting it grow. Actually making new spaces for trees, which I find really exciting and you know, hopefully that's going to be the future of not just Sheffield, but lots of cities around the country. 

Adam: That's a brilliant thought to end on. Thank you very much for a fantastic day out and I was worried that it would be really wet and horrible and actually, yet again it's been quite pretty, the snow and it's only rained a little bit on us. Look, a squirrel.  

Adam: Well, I hope you enjoyed that visit to one of Sheffield's open wooded spaces, and if you want to find a wood near you, you can do so by going to the Woodland Trust website woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Until next time, happy wanderings. 

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special. Or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. 

Join us for an episode of virtual time travel to visit Hatfield Forest, Essex and explore over 2,000 years of rich history. As we journey through this outdoor museum, we chat to Tom Reed, a Woodland Trust ancient tree expert, and Ian Pease, a National Trust ranger, who explain why the wildlife and cultural value of these trees makes them irreplaceable. Discover why ancient trees are so important, what makes a tree ancient, how people have lived and worked with them through the centuries and the urgent need to better protect them.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, today I am off to Hatfield Forest, which is the best-preserved medieval hunting forest in Europe, which has a very rich history stretching back, well, a very long time, some 2,000 years or so.
Now, the forest itself is actually managed by the National Trust, but the Woodland Trust works very closely with them. In particular, the reason I'm going there is to look at and talk about ancient trees, their importance to people and landscape, and of course, how old you have to be to be ancient.
Ian: My name is Ian Pease, and I’m one of the rangers here for the National Trust at Hatfield Forest.
Adam: And so how long has your association been with this forest then?
Ian: Well, it's getting on for 30 years.
Adam: You're looking good on it.
Ian: Thank you. Thank you. [Laughter]
Adam: That’s very cool. Now look I have met you by this extraordinary, well, is it a tree or is it two trees? Inaudible just describe where we are standing.
Ian: So, we are standing just to the left of the entrance road as you come into the forest and this is a magnificent hornbeam, er and although, like you say Adam, it looks like it's two trees it is actually one.
Adam: How do you, how do you know?
Ian: Well, it's done what's called compartmentalise. So, what happens when trees get to this age –and this tree is without a doubt probably around 700 years old – is the heartwood falls away and you're left…
Adam: The heartwood’s in the middle?
Ian: The heartwood, the heartwood in the centre falls away, and what you’re left with is the living part of the tree, which is the sapwood and what you can see there is that what trees do, trees are very good at adapting when they get older. And they are generally very good at adapting throughout their lives. So, what has happened here is this tree has stabilised itself by compartmentalising, so sealed off these two halves to stabilise itself and you can also see what we call aerial roots starting to come down from the canopy which gives the tree the rigidity and strength.
Adam: So, where is that? I can’t see, let’s have a look, what do you mean?
Ian: Yeah, so let’s have a closer look.
Adam: I’ve never heard of aerial roots.
Ian: You can see these structures…
Adam: Yes, I see.
Ian: …these structures are what we call aerial roots.
Adam: Yeah, they do look like… but they're not in the ground, they’re in the air. So where are they...? What function are they serving?
Ian: Well, they’re basically supporting the tree and what's happened here, this is an old pollard, so originally, they’d have been what we call bowling in the top there, and the roots would have gone down into that sort of composted material that was captured in the bowling, and as that’s gradually fallen away that's what you're left with at the top there.
Adam: So, these roots are supporting the tree as opposed to bringing it nutrients or anything?
Ian: Well, they are supplying nutrients for it from this compost material…
Adam: Oh, I see, which is still there.
Ian: You can still see some of it there. What's happened obviously is as the trees aged, it's fallen through. Um and you can see the compartmentalisation on the edges there. A sort of almost callous effect.
Adam: Well, amazing, well look I gotta get a photo of you by this which I will put on my Twitter account. Do you have a Twitter account?
Ian: I haven't, but I’ve got Instagram and Facebook.
Adam: I’m sure we’ll put it on all of those things so you can see what Ian is talking about. Fantastic, well look, this is just the beginning. And you said it was the ancient way, the ancient tree way? The road?
Ian: Er no this isn’t the ancient way. This is, this is the vehicle accessway into the forest. But having said that Adam, there is stagecoaches who used to travel from the east heading to Bishop… sorry, heading down to London, would cut through Hatfield Forest to cut out Bishop Stortford.
Adam: [laughter] Okay right. An ancient cut-through. There we are.
Ian: That's it.
Adam: There we are. Not quite up-to-date traffic news, [laughter] but if you're a time traveller, that's a bit of traffic news for you. Look, my first visit here, we've come on an amazing day, I'm very, very lucky. What would you suggest I look out for here?
Ian: Well certainly if you go for a walk through… what I, what I sort of advise people to do is to go for a walk around the lake area to start with because that way as you go down to the lake area you go through the medieval landscape. And what’s nice about the lake area is you’ve got the 1740s landscape, so that's the Capability Brown heart to the forest. He was employed here in the 1740s before the National Trust had the forest. It was owned by the Houblon family, and he developed, formed the lake down there and built a shell house next to the lake. So, you could almost go on a bit of a time travel, you know virtual time travel, by walking through this wood pasture where we are now amongst these stunning ancient trees. Take yourself into the 1740s and walk around the lake and then and then go from there.
Adam: Brilliant. I'm heading off to the 1740s, what a fantastic bit of map reading that will be. Thank you very much, Ian. Really, really nice to see you.
Ian: You’re welcome, you’re welcome.
[Walking noise]
Adam: Well, I'm just walking out actually, into a bit of open field here. Ooh look wild mushrooms… must avoid that. Don’t want to trample on those. And beneath one of these trees is Tom from the Woodland Trust, and he is going to be my guide to the rest of this amazing forest.
[Walking noise]
Adam: So, Tom, I assume? Hi! What an amazing place, amazing place isn’t it?
Tom: An amazing place Adam, hi, nice to meet you.
Adam: First of all, this is an unusual forest in terms of the Woodland Trust because it's actually the National Trust, but you sort of… this is a joint project or, explain the relationship? Why this is different?
Tom: So, the National Trust and the Woodland Trust are both really passionate about seeing the protection of ancient and veteran trees, are interested in studying them and knowing where they are.
So, when… we’re here today because the National Trust and the Woodland Trust have been working together, well, for quite a few years actually, we've been working together to map ancient and veteran trees to our Ancient Tree Inventory.
And also, in the past year and a half, we've also been working with the National Trust on a project called the Green Recovery Project, which was a Challenge Fund that we, both organisations, were working on. This was actually one of the sites, in fact, I was here just six months ago where I got to see first-hand some of the restoration work that was being done to some of these trees, some of the historic pollarded hornbeams for example. We got to see how they are now being managed and cared for here by the Trusts.
Adam: And it is an amazing place. I mean we're lucky to be here on a great day. Oh! You can hear… we’re near Stansted, so you might hear an airplane in the background there. Oh, but we've come out of this lovely, sort of, bit of woodland into this amazing open area here and it's, it does feel a very mixed sort of landscape doesn't it?
Tom: Absolutely, I think if, if you're walking here with your dog or just on a fun day out, you might just think to yourself ‘ah this is a field or some nice trees here’. But actually, when you stop and look around you can see these living links to the past, and what we, walking through here is a medieval landscape where you've got a mixture of ancient trees, we can see some decaying oaks in the background over there. We’ve actually just walked past some large hornbeam pollards. So, these are trees that were working trees, hundreds of years ago that were managed as part of this landscape to provide timber for those who manage them, worked and lived in the area. So, to be able to walk past trees like that and, you know, to touch them – these living monuments – is just a real privilege.
Well, we've got a mix here, we've got a mix of young trees, mature trees, ancient trees, and this area that we're stood on now is called, referred to as wood pasture because it was historically a wood landscape, where you had both a mix of livestock agriculture and also tree management as well.
Adam: Well look, it's amazing just to our left there's two lovely trees, and I… I don't know what they are… but they're so lovely two people have stopped to take photos of them and I mean just a measure of how beautiful some of these, this landscape is. What… just a quick test… do you happen to know what that tree is?
Tom: Yeah. So, we've got two, sort of, mature hawthorns there, so erm elsewhere in the forest there are actually some much older hawthorns… we have some ancient hawthorns here that would be several hundred years old. These are probably mature, probably over 100–150 years old…
Adam: And they got lovely sort of red, red splattering over them. It just looks like someone's painted that, it's quite, quite an amazing sight. So, you talk about ancient trees. So what? What classifies a tree as ancient then? Because if [laugh] these were young and they’re like 100 or something. So, what’s ancient exactly?
Tom: So, it's a great question. So ancient trees are those that are in their third and final life stage essentially. So, the sort of, the age at which we call different species ancient is different because different species have different life expectancies, and they have different growth rates.
So, for example, if we look at yew trees, we make all those ancient from around about 400 to 500 years plus. If we look at hawthorn, for example, we would say they’re probably ancient from around about 200 years of age. So, it does vary depending on which species you are referring to, but essentially the ancient phases, the third and final life stage… and very few trees actually live old enough to become ancient.
It's only sites like this where the trees have been retained where, you know, these trees not been disturbed, they've not been felled, there's been no development here. So, these trees have survived in the landscape and been allowed to survive and that's why we can enjoy them today. So yeah, that's what an ancient tree is.
Adam: And I mean, obviously there's almost a sentimental reason you, you don't want to destroy something which is 700 years old. But from an environmental perspective, do ancient trees offer the environment, do they offer animals something more than a younger tree does?
Tom: Absolutely. I mean, I like to think of ancient trees as being like a living oasis for wildlife essentially. So, these are areas where you've got a huge variety of habitats both, you know, within like the tree structure, in the roots, in the canopy, even within like the heartwood and the hollows. So, ancient trees offer huge benefits for wildlife.
Adam: But sorry, you're saying that's more… a 700-year-old tree would offer more environmental benefits than a 100-year-old tree. Is that what you're saying?
Tom: Yeah, if you are comparing trees of the same species.
Adam: So why is that? What is happening in that period that offers that benefit then?
Tom: So, the reason really is owed to the decaying wood habitat. So as a tree ages, you get natural decay that's often caused by special heart rot fungi that can decay the tree. So, as it’s standing it’s decaying slowly over time, and by – that decaying wood – it kind of creates a load of microhabitats, so you get huge benefits for invertebrates. In fact, the site we’re on today is one of the top ten sites in the UK for rare invertebrates because of the decaying wood habitats that are here.
If you imagine a decaying tree with hollows and cavities and water pockets… imagine if you're an invertebrate, you know, you’re such a small organism and you've got this huge ancient tree with all this variety of habitats. I mean you've essentially got… your whole world is in this tree, it's a whole universe of habitats. So, that’s why they’re important.
Adam: So, it’s quite poetic, isn't it? In its decay… the very fact it’s decaying offers new life.
Tom: Absolutely, exactly. So, they become, you know, just… they just transform into these oases for wildlife and it’s owing to the decaying habitats that they have.
Adam: And what's the oldest trees that you've got around here then?
Tom: Yeah. Well, so some of these trees may well be in excess of 700 to 800 years of age.
Adam: And are they yew? Because yew trees tend to last the longest don’t they?
Tom: Yeah. So, a lot of the oldest trees on this site will be pollards. So pollarding is where you cut the branches of a tree above head height. This was a historic, sort of, tree management practice – essentially the people who used to live and work here wanted to farm their livestock, and in order to make sure that they didn't, sort of, graze on the trees that they also used to harvest timber from, they were able to cut the tree above head height, typically above two metres in height. And what that does is quite two things. For the people managing these trees, it means that they can easily harvest the timber because in absence of power tools… imagine they were using hand tools and as the tree gets cut back it regrows into sort of finer, smaller stems that can be more easily harvested.
Adam: And that’s the sign of pollarding, isn’t it? If you're a tree detective and you see these, sort of, small stems all coming up it’s a sign it’s been a pollarded tree.
Tom: Absolutely, typically it will have, like, a fluted form cut around about two metres at head height and you'll see like a typical pollard knuckle, which is where you see all of these stems converging on the same point.
But pollarding does actually bring some benefits to the tree as well and that's why some of the oldest trees here will be pollards because it has the effect of almost stabilising the tree. It means that the tree doesn't get too top-heavy and then collapses and dies. Instead, it keeps the trees more typically smaller and if they’re regularly cut that keeps the tree in that stable form.
So even the sort of the trees here which are, you know, extremely hollow, they look like, you know, how are they even still standing, because, like, what’s supporting them? Because they're being managed as pollards.
And then, you know, there are some sites where pollarding has stopped, you know, for example at Burnham Beeches is a site where you can see a lot of the pollards have not been pollarded for a long time and they’ve started to become top-heavy now, so and that presents a risk that you get greater wind loading and then they fall.
So going back to what we were talking about the Green Recovery project that we are working on with the National Trust. And like I said, I was here six months ago, and we got to see some of the tree management here and we got to see some pollarding essentially. So, they were sort of cutting back the… some branches in the canopy to basically continue the pollarding management to try and replicate what was being done hundreds of years ago to make sure that these trees can survive for many years to come.
Adam: Amazing that. Ian. Ian promised me some time travel. He pointed me towards the Capability Brown landscape. Do you know which way that is?
Tom: Yeah, that would be straight back down the track.
Adam: I was going to say, it’s going the other way. Okay, but do you think we should head this way first?
Tom: Yeah. Well, I mean, we can. We can go.
Adam: I'm going with you. I'm going with you and will… I'm definitely going to see the Capability Brown later, but you lead me on.
Tom: We can certainly make our way back there.
Adam: So, tell me about where we're heading.
Tom: So now we're just, we're walking through a sort of former medieval landscape. So, we've got a variety of trees here, we've got some oaks, we've got hawthorns, we've got field maples, we’ve got hornbeams. And if we’re walking here, we can just see the sheer variety of trees in the landscape.
So, when I'm walking through this landscape and I can't help but think about, you know, the people who were working here and living here and the way that this, the site, was managed. We can hear overhead planes are leaving Stansted Airport and I can only imagine what those people would have thought about that [laugh]. And it just, it just makes you think about the changes that this landscape has seen. And erm obviously the reason that we have ancient trees here is because this part of the landscape has remained unchanged. So, whilst there's been a lot of change around this site, this area has survived and that's ultimately enabled these trees to survive as well.
Adam: Now you look after a lot of woodland. What separates this from lots of the other things that you've got an association with?
Tom: So, I suppose what's really interesting about this site is that it's a former forest and then when we think about forests, people typically think about trees and they probably picture woodland, but actually…
Adam: That’s fair enough, isn’t it?
Tom: It’s fair enough, but forest actually has a very different meaning in terms of the medieval sense. So, a forest was essentially an area of land that was subject to special hunting laws and these new areas were preserved really for the royals and, well, the royals and their sort of associates to hunt deer and enjoy riding through the landscape and they liked this kind of open landscape where the trees were kind of scattered. So, when you think of forests, like people typically think of dense woodland, but actually, it's more like this. It’s big trees in a sort of sparse landscape where deer are allowed to run around, and the royals could be… were there on horseback sort of chasing them and hunting them. It was sort of a sport for them. And in a lot of sense, the commoners, if you like, were kept away from sites like this. An erm, but then the kind of, the legacy has been preserved.
Adam: And it's interesting, isn't it, that because we think of these as natural places, they are natural places, that's what's important about them. But they're not unmanaged. It's not like the hand of man has not had a role in shaping this has very much been a man-made, a man-shaped environment. Is that fair?
Tom: That's absolutely fair, yes. If I was… what’s interesting when we look at ancient tree distribution more generally, there is a clear link between humans and where ancient trees are. So, for example, you might find ancient yew trees often in a churchyard setting, coz often…, well, ancient yews were respected by sort of earlier civilizations, the early Christians, even before that, the Druids respected ancient yews, which is why they've kind of been retained and associated with places of religious worship, you know, so there's always those kind of links between where humans have been and where ancient trees are now. And it just shows that really throughout history we’ve respected our trees, you know, other civilizations and cultures have respected these trees and you know, now we need to respect them too and continue their legacy.
Adam: And I suppose one of the things that’s striking for me is that although we are near Stansted, although it hasn't taken me long to drive from London, as far as you can see, you can't see anything. It's sort of trees for as far as you can see. It’s a remarkable oasis in a rather heavily developed part of the UK.
Tom: Absolutely. You know, to be able to come to this site only like an hour away from London is quite remarkable really, that places like this have survived. It's like a living outdoor museum almost. You know, you can go up to some of these trees, put your hand on them and these were the same trees that were being worked on over 500 years ago. You know… how many elements of nature can you say that about? You know, it’s a remarkable privilege to be able to go and visit trees like that. That were managed hundreds of years ago.
Adam: OK, now there is a suitable bench almost shaped fallen branch, so maybe we can head over there for a sit down and a chat.
Tom: Sounds good. Hey, got some good sort of… at the top of the tree there, you’ve got something called retrenchment which is basically where the tree is dying back essentially.
Adam: Right.
Tom: So, over time like the canopy sort of reorganises itself. And then the tree kind of grows downward eventually. So, trees don't grow infinitely up and up and up, they tend to get… they die down and they get broader over time.
Adam: So that's the sign of a change in its lifestyle… life stage sorry?
Tom: Absolutely.
Adam: So, we can see some sort of dead branches at the top that means it's coming into another stage, it's probably going to thicken out a bit.
Tom: Exactly. Yeah. So, what I mean… what's happening essentially as the tree reaches a sort of theoretical maximum size… eventually, the tree can't transport that water from the roots. That kind of hydraulic action becomes limited. It can't pump water to the very top of the tree and so it, kind of, stops investing in those branches. It’s grown to a good height, it doesn't need to compete with other trees around it, so it starts to reorganise itself. And those branches at the top start to die back and instead the tree invests in some of those like low… what were lower branches and they become more dominant, and the tree becomes broader in profile. The trunk becomes much wider as well. So, it’s a typical sign of an ancient tree that they will typically have a large girth for their species. Like the trunk will have a large circumference for its species. That’s like a key sign.
Adam: Alright, look, this isn't… I can't quite sit on this one, but this is a very very pleasant place to stop. So, one of the big projects from the Woodland Trust is this Ancient Tree Inventory and I think you’re sort of… you're in charge of that. So, what is that? Why is it important?
Tom: So, the Ancient Tree Inventory is a citizen science project. So it’s something that anyone can take part in and essentially what it seeks to do is to map ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK to an online interactive map that everyone can, sort of, see, use, and enjoy. It started as a project called the Ancient Tree Hunt and essentially it was just to get ancient trees on the radar really, to get people inspired by them, to get people out there recording them. And in that project alone they mapped over 100,000 trees.
But since then, it continued under the name of the Ancient Tree Inventory, and we're continuing to map trees on a daily basis. So, we have a network of volunteers around the UK who are more expert volunteers who are called verifiers, and what they are doing is going out and checking trees that members of the public have added. So, if people have been on a walk and have seen a big tree or a tree that looks like it's old – might be ancient, might be veteran – they add it to the map, that gets recorded as an unverified tree and then one of our volunteer verifiers comes along, they’ll visit the tree and they’ll assess whether they think it’s an ancient tree or a veteran or a notable. They'll also maybe take some extra measurements of the tree, they’ll check that it's been recorded in the right place and that the species has been identified correctly, things like that.
Essentially what we're trying to do with the Ancient Tree Inventory, as well as raising awareness about ancient and veteran trees, is also, erm, our role in terms of research and understanding their current distribution. But also, from their protection point of view, the Ancient Tree Inventory is actually a really useful resource for the likes of people doing environmental impact assessments. So, we get a lot of requests for data from ecological consultants, from arboriculture consultants, even the local authorities that want to know where are the most significant ancient and veteran trees in their county or on a particular site, so that that can then be used to help inform, you know, planning decisions and, you know, we'd like to think that that is going to grow more that when, for example, there's a development or, you know, some sort of proposed change to an area that people will consult the Ancient Tree Inventory and they'll consider, sort of, changing plans if ancient or veteran trees are going to be harmed. We really just want to make sure that there is no loss… further loss of ancient and veteran trees essentially.
Adam: And what sort of protection do ancient trees have? Do they have… like a listed building you get listed protection so you can't mess around with it. You can't knock it down, can't alter it. Does a 700-year-old tree get the same protection as a 700-year-old piece of brick?
Tom: Well, I'm afraid to say the answer to that is no. So, none of the ancient trees, don't have any legal protection in the UK. As you say, some of our most treasured monuments and buildings benefit from scheduled monument status, but for ancient trees which may be of, at least the same age if not older, they don't have any protection.
In fact, I remember on a recent visit to a churchyard where we went to see a really remarkable ancient yew tree, I think someone jokingly said at the time that the wood in the beams of that church are probably more protected than the wood in the trunk of that ancient yew tree. And that, kind of, really opened my mind to that whole debate on making that comparison between built heritage monuments and ancient trees. And we really want to see ancient trees be more considered as features of our cultural heritage, archaeological heritage, you know, they really are these living monuments and we need to look after them.
Adam: Do you get a sense that public opinion is swinging in that direction to support ancient trees?
Tom: Yeah, I think it is. I mean, you know, based on my role of working on the Ancient Tree Inventory, I've the fortune of speaking to members of the public about their ancient trees. And we do get lots of concern expressed to the Woodland Trust about, you know, what's happening to ancient and veteran trees in their area.
But there is actually something that we're doing at the moment at the Trust which is our Living Legends campaign that launched earlier this year. So, we're actually making an attempt to gain stronger protection for ancient and veteran trees. We have a petition that's live at the moment and the campaign has a lot of different activities happening at the moment, but one of the headline things anyone can do is sign our petition where we're calling for stronger legal protection, for that to be reflected in policy so that there is basically legal protection to stop any harm to the trees.
Adam: Okay. So, if someone's interested in being a volunteer and, sort of, adding to that inventory, how do they go about it?
Tom: Yeah, so anyone can take part in the Ancient Tree Inventory. All they need to do is go to the Ancient Tree Inventory website where they’ll be able to register, and they'll be able to create a free account. Essentially that means that when you sign into your account, you can just record the trees. The main things that you'll need to record are things like, you know, where the tree is so you take like a grid reference. Erm, if you can record the girth of the tree – so, this is the circumference of the tree – of the trunk itself…
Adam: So, you need a long tape measure?
Tom: Yeah, we typically suggest having a tape measure around about 10 metres where you can often get like a surveyor’s tape from your local hardware store for example. And you can measure the trunk, normally about one and a half metres from ground level for consistency. You’re really looking for the narrowest girth of this trunk. So, if the tree has like a big, sort of, burr, or if there's like a low hanging branch, then just record underneath it to try and get the narrowest measurement. So that… and that's essentially the most technical elements. If you can just record as well the species of the tree, whether it's on public or private land, do make sure to record some photos as well.
The key things that we’re really interested in looking at with a tree when we’re assessing whether it’s ancient or veteran is our veteran features or decay features. So, these are the kind of decaying wood habitats, for example, if the tree is hollowing, if the tree has decaying branches… so the tree behind me here has some deadwood in the top of the crown – this is what we call retrenchment. And any other kind of deadwood cavities, water pockets, holes, that sort of thing is all great to capture, both in the record itself, but also in the images too.
Obviously, the more that people can tell us about trees, the more we know. And then it makes it a much more valuable resource. So, we always encourage people to submit as much information as they can.
Adam: And if I mean like me, I'm very bad at spotting tree types. If you don't, if you see an old tree and you think I wanna record that, but I don't know what sort of tree it is, is that a problem or can you just go look, here's a photo, you’ll probably know better than I do?
Tom: Yeah. So, it is possible to record the species as unsure. It might be that you know that it's an oak, but you're not sure if it’s pedunculate or sessile, so you can just record it as oak. We have a network of volunteer verifiers who are sort of ancient tree experts who will check…
Adam: Check your homework for you.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Adam: And if you can't spot the tree type, there is actually a Woodland Trust app, isn't there?
Tom: Yeah, that's right Adam, we have a… the Woodland Trust has a species identification app that you can use as well. The good thing is that for our ancient trees, most of the time they are actually native. So, the common native species are typically going to be, you know, oaks, beech, ash, hornbeam, yew trees. So, you know, these are species that most people are quite familiar with cause they tend to be native.
Adam: We should do a podcast on that, sort of, how to spot the top five native UK trees. An idea for another podcast… you may be dragged back into this. Fantastic.
Tom: Sounds good.
[Pause]
Adam: So, we've been walking through a beautiful sort of woodland glade, a very covered area. And what is typical of this particular site is that you do come out into so many different landscapes and so we've come out into this very open area, all of a sudden with this extraordinarily large lake. I think there's something suspiciously like a tearoom next door which might attract my attention in a moment… and a couple of seats finally to sit down.
So, Tom, now… It's a beautiful place. I mean we’re, we’re... The weeds rustling in the wind, framing the lake in front of us… There’s some ducks and some rowing boats and this is a wonderful place. But I… the feature here is ancient woodland, so is there a way of sort of measuring the value of a particular tree? Do you… is it very just sort of thumb in the air, sort of thing, in the wind… or is there a more scientific approach you can take?
Tom: Yeah, I think there are lots of ways in which different people value their ancient trees and so one acronym we tend to use to capture, sort of, the main themes of why we value our ancient trees, can be thought of as ABC. So that stands for aesthetic value, biological value and cultural value.
There is also historical value, which I'll talk about in a moment, but think about, sort of, aesthetic value and why our ancient trees are important, you know, can you imagine, sort of, walking through the landscape that we're walking today without the ancient trees? They do provide, like the character of this site, you know, walking and seeing these big hollowing living monuments – they’re almost like sculptures. And, you know, not just on these sorts of sites, but if you think of what would our churchyards look like without our ancient yews? Or what would our hedgerows look like without those old hawthorn trees? Or what would our, sort of, the Highlands of Scotland look like without those, kind of remarkable lone standing-proud alders, and rowans and hollies that are like really typical of that landscape? So, because ancient trees form, like, a really important part of the overall character of our landscape that's one way in which we value them.
The other way, of course, is biologically, so they provide immense habitat variety for wildlife and a single tree can support thousands of species and that’s owing to the decaying wood habitats that they have. So as a tree ages it naturally hollows, starts to break down, you get hollowing in the branches, in the trunk, you get hollowing around the base of the tree – what we call buttressing. All of these create pockets and habitats and even microhabitats for wildlife, so it can be used by a range of organisms from birds to reptiles, to mammals like squirrels, badgers. For example, with birds, as well, owls will use them, they will actually use the cavities found in the canopies of ancient trees, they make their nests. Same for woodpeckers, which will use decaying wood to make their nests and bore for invertebrates. And of course, the invertebrates themselves – the opportunities provided to invertebrates by ancient trees is remarkable. There’s a special term to describe invertebrates that depend on decaying wood, and that word is saproxylic. So, saproxylic invertebrates are those which depend on this decaying wood for a part of their life cycle.
And then there is also the cultural value that we place on our ancient trees.
Adam: So, that’s the C.
Tom: That’s the C in our ABC.
Adam: So, tell me about the cultural values. Now actually… that must be a hard thing to measure?
Tom: Absolutely so, it’s not always clear, in fact, that some trees you may walk past and not know that that tree has been, or you know what it's seen in its life and how other people in the past have interacted with it. For example, ancient trees in the churchyards, so it is often that you find ancient yew trees linked with former sites of religious worship because the… our early ancestors, the druids, and the sort of, early Christians had a… they saw, essentially, ancient yew trees as a deity, they worshipped them, they respected them. And as a result, those ancient yews persisted in that landscape.
Adam: The cultural aspect, there's a cultural aspect, but there is also, it doesn't run from the alphabet [inaudible] ABC H, there’s an H isn’t there? A historical reference here, because these trees have been around for 700 years, 1000 years – kings and queens will have wandered under these trees, important decisions would have been made. Historic really, really historic decisions would be made. And under the boughs of these trees.
Tom: Absolutely. And so, there are some trees around UK which we refer to as heritage trees that have… that we know have bared witness to some important historical moments. Or that well-known historical figures that visited those trees. For example, we have the Queen Elizabeth Oak or we have the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Tree which is thought to bear witness to the start of the trade union movement in the 1800s, and we have the Ankerwycke Yew that bared witness to the signing of the Magna Carta by King John, under that very tree. And it’s still there today, a tree that is over 2,000 years old has, you know, such important historical values – irreplaceable in fact. That is probably the one word that we would like people to associate with trees – is the word irreplaceable. Because if that tree was to be lost, you would lose all of that historical reference.
Adam: Fantastic. You know this site well, I mean you've come a long way to see me today, so I'm super pleased and very grateful for the guide. But I know you love this place, don’t you?
Tom: Absolutely. I need no excuse to come here. I think it just feels like walking back in history essentially. And there’s just an amazing variety of trees. Yeah, I could just spend the whole week here.
Adam: I think my family might miss me in a week, but who knows? They might not… they might not notice. But they’re certainly not going to notice for the rest of day, so I'm going to take the rest of the day here. Thank you very much.
Well, my thanks to Ian from the National Trust and Tom from the Woodland Trust but most of all, I suppose, thanks to you for listening. Now do remember if you want to find a wood near you, well, the Woodland Trust has a website to help. Just go to woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Now you can find a wood near you. Well, until next time, happy wandering.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners, and volunteers and don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes, or wherever you're listening to us, and do give us a review and a rating.

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Much as I love a woodland walk, my tree identification skills leave a lot to be desired, so I travelled to Londonthorpe Wood, Grantham for a lesson from the experts. We join tree ID guru Sally to learn how to recognise common trees from their leaves, catkins, bark and berries. From apple and ash to hawthorn and hazel, she also tells us more about the trees’ value for wildlife. I learned so much during this episode, and I hope you do too.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.
Adam: Do you know what? I have been wandering around woods for many years and I've been doing so rather ignorantly. I mean, I like it and everything, but I actually don't know the names, or the histories, or the importance of a lot of the trees I am passing. So, I’ve tried to correct that, and to do that I'm taking a little lesson. I’m going back to school, and I'm doing that with the assistance of Sally Bavin, who is the assistant conservation evidence officer at the Woodland Trust. And we’re going to Londonthorpe Wood, which is near Grantham, which is in fact near the headquarters of the Woodland Trust. And she's going to run me through some of the key things to look out for in trees.
Now, of course, we're coming to the end of the easy season to identify trees because leaves are a big clue. Leaves are falling off the trees, as is their wont at this time of year. But nonetheless, there are still enough of them around for me to make a good guess and I thought it was high time I learn something and hopefully have a bit of fun and share that insight with you.
So, off to Londonthorpe Wood, it is! And I'm gonna meet Sally Bavin from the Woodland Trust.
So, Sally, hi! We’ve met under a tree. Look at… I can tell straight away it’s an apple tree because it has apples on it! [Laugh]
Sally: Yes!
Adam: But I come for some lessons – gone back to school. You know, how to identify trees when they don't have apples on them, so they are not as easily identifiable. So, is this what you do at the Trust? Go around identifying trees? Is this what you do normally?
Sally: [Laugh] Not all the time, but a small part of my role is, erm I lead a tree ID course. So, it's just an afternoon, we run it about every six months.
Adam: Yes, I have to say, I mean I was very keen to do this, well, because I’ve gone to lots of woodlands, I am very ignorant about identifying trees. And I was thinking, we’ve gotta rush before all the leaves fall off, because then it's a lot harder, but they're still, there are trees that have got lots of leaves. 
So, before we start the course. Why is it important to know what a tree is – what species of tree you're looking at?
Sally: Yeah, well, I think it depends. It depends on who you are as to what your interest is in the trees. I think generally for just the public it's a nice thing to note, help you understand your surroundings of a lot better and it's a sort of the first step into connecting with nature, at a bit of a deeper level than just enjoying the greenery. Because you can then look for the specific things about different species that changed throughout the seasons, and you can be expecting the apples and looking out for them in summer when they're only just appearing. That sort of thing. 
So, it's good for helping people to connect with nature on a more personal level. Because the type of trees in a woodland can tell you a lot about the sort of story of the woodland. So, it could help indicate whether it’s ancient woodland. It could tell you about what sort of soil types underlying the sites are and that kind of thing. What ground flora, therefore, you’re likely to sort of expect and indicate the condition of the woodland in terms of ecological health. So, if you've got lots of non-native tree species there that could tell you that the woodland’s perhaps degraded and in need of restoration, that kind of thing.
Adam: Okay, fantastic, and you’re going to take me on a little journey and we're going to identify some trees. Now, I have to say first of all, about me personally, and I think others as well might find this whole thing rather daunting because there are probably thousands of tree types, and you think how on earth am I going to get to know any trees? Really as I’d have to go back to university really. Is it as daunting as it sort of first sounds?
Sally: No, definitely not. There's only a handful really of really common species. So, for example, maybe sort of ten of the most common would be oak, ash, hawthorn, birch, beech, Scots pine, rowan, hazel, blackthorn and willow. And then you get to know those and then you sort of gradually pepper some more interesting species in between. 
Adam: Right, so that's very manageable. Super! There are sort of 10 of some of the most popular, well-known, widely dispersed UK native trees, the list of which I've already forgotten. But if you know those ten you can sort of work your way around the woodland fairly well.
Sally: Yeah. And it depends on where you are coz you won't necessarily see all of those even.
Adam: No, okay, very good. Well, let's not where we are. This is clearly an apple tree because it's got nice… got a very good harvest of apples on it. If it didn't, how do you spot an apple tree?
Sally: Okay, so yeah, so first of all it is important to note that this is an apple tree, it is a domesticated apple variety of some description, this one, and the reason why it's here at Londonthorpe, though it's not a wild tree, is to help with the sort of engagement with visitors. 
So, I think the idea when this wood was planted back in the 90s, was for it to, be very much, to engage people. That people could have a snack as they went around and have that sort of engagement with nature. If you wanted to have a taste of one, although they are a bit higher up [laugh], you’d know that it tastes a lot different to the crab apple that we’ll see later on, which is very much…
Adam: The crab apples are tiny, aren’t they? 
Sally: mmmm.
Adam: I didn't think they were edible? 
Sally: Well, the wild ones are, yeah, I think that they’re edible, they’re just not very palatable… 
Adam: Not very nice, okay. 
Sally: So, our ancestors bred them to be different [laugh].
Adam: Okay, alright. So, but anything about the sort of branches or leaves one could look out for.
Sally: So, yes, so. A lot of fruit trees are members of the Rosaceae family, so the Rose family. And quite a feature of those is that they tend to grow these sort of short woody spurs from the twig, which then have a spray of leaves all emerging from a kind of cluster.
Adam: Right, right. Yep.
Sally: Which is one characteristic of an apple tree. The leaves are simple leaves that are oval, and they have some tooth edges as well. So, they’re generally kind of slightly glossy and darker on the top than they are on the bottom.
Adam: Right.
Sally: So, in the spring, obviously you wouldn't have the apples on there.
Adam: No.
Sally: You’d have the blossom which is a white, with a slight…
Adam: It’s beautiful isn’t it, apple blossom, it’s beautiful. 
Sally: Yeah. A slight tinge of pink to the petals.
Adam: Okay, well, wonderful. And [inaudible] to be honest, I never eat anything in the wild because I'm terrified of killing myself and I don't think I should. Because I'm with an expert, I feel much safer, so is it okay if I grab…
Sally: You can grab…
Adam: I mean neither of us are particularly tall, but there are a couple in about stretching height here, so hang on a second… 
Sally: Yep, go for it.
Adam: I’m getting stuck on this already.
Sally: I have to say, I definitely agree that if you're not 100% confident, definitely don't eat anything. But this is definitely okay. This is definitely an apple tree.
Adam: Oh ooo look I’ve got one, I’ve got one.
Sally: [laugh] Go on.
Adam: Okay.
Sally: Not the biggest.
[Laughter]
Adam: It’s not, it’s, I haven’t had breakfast. And I don’t think lunch is on the menu, so this might be it, okay, hold on a second, you'll hear this. [Chomp]
Sally: Fresh as anything!
Adam: Mmmm [chomping] – I can tell you it's lovely. Mmmm okay that was very good, very good. Okay. So, that's our first tree, lead on and we shall find our second!
Sally: Let’s go this way So yeah, you’re tasting the sweetness that our ancestors bred into it.
[Chomping]
Adam: Do you know what type of apple this is?
Sally: [Laughing] I’ve no idea. 
Adam: No idea. 
Sally: No. [laugh]
Adam: It’s a tasty one that’s all. Mmmm very nice!
Sally: Okay, we’ve come to a… Adam: Well hold on hold on a second, I’ve gotta finish this mouthful. [Laughter] Sally: We’ll see lots more, so carry on chewing.
Adam: Okay, Let me just finish this before – I’ll spit apple all over you otherwise. [Chomping]
Sally: So, we’re reaching another tree here, that’s again one of the really common ones that you'll see in lots of woodlands across the UK. So, this is an ash tree.
Adam: Okay. So first, well can you describe it for us?
Sally: So, this one's a fairly young tree. It's only maybe seven centimetres in diameter on the trunk. It's got really quite pale bark, which I would say is quite characteristic of ash, a sort of ashen colour. 
Adam: Also, as opposed to the apple tree, which is really broad, had lots of leaves. It was really sort of dense-like bush-like. 
Sally: Yeah. 
Adam: This one, you see the main trunk, which is very thin and only a few branches and a few leaves. It's much more minimalist.
Sally: Yes. So, these, so, ash trees are one of the most common trees in this area that you find in hedgerows. When they’re mature, they can be, you know, really have a good size trunk on them… 
Adam: Right… 
Sally: and a real spreading crown. But this one’s young, it's not reached that size yet, but the main ID feature at this time of year I'd say is the leaf, which is very characteristic. So, experts describe it as a compound. They’re a bit far away, but we can get the idea from here. So, it's a compound leaf because each of those leafstalks has pairs of leaves coming off it. 
Adam: Right. One to the left, one to the right.
Sally: So those, what look like small leaves, are actually leaflets and the whole thing is a leaf. So each thing is um, each whole leaf emerges from the stem and has a green leafstalk. The whole thing is shed in the autumn and then comes back.
Adam: Right, we’ve gotta go back over this. So, what I think is a leaf, you're telling me is not a leaf, it's a leaflet. Leaflet, have I said that right? 
Sally: A leaflet, yep. So, you’ve got pairs of leaflets.
Adam: So actually, there’s sort of one, two, three, four… four pairs and one at the end. So, there’s eight, nine leaves, what I think of as leaves. You're saying technically that's one leaf actually.  
Sally: Exactly. And that's because the whole thing emerges from one bud. And is shed as a whole thing in the autumn.
Adam: I see. Now, the ash, obviously one hears a lot about this, ash dieback. So, this tree looks quite healthy though.
Sally: Oooer
Adam: No, well okay, it doesn’t look healthy.
Sally: No, if you look at the top you can see the leaves the left on it are only really in a sort of central area. All of these branches which are extending to the edge, to the extremity, of the tree are bare already.
Adam: Yes, so it’s not healthy. I’m a complete idiot. It doesn’t look healthy at all. It looks very sick.
Sally: Sadly, the fact that it has dieback is now one of the key, sort of, features to ID ash, which is very sad. [Adam: right] If you see a tree that looks like, you know even in the height of summer, that it’s lost quite a lot of its leaves, quite often that will be an ash tree with ash dieback.
[Break]
Adam: So, you’ve stopped underneath, this tree, much darker bark. So, what is it?
Sally: So, this is a wild cherry.
Adam: Okay, so, no cherries on it. So, before you sort of explain the defining feature, can you just describe the tree generally?
Sally: Yes. So, it's another member of the rose family. So, leaves are kind of similar to the apple in that their ovals and they sort of emerge in these sprays, but they're a lot more pointed. And the teeth around the edge, I would say, are a lot more defined. And this one's sort of a medium-aged tree, I would say – like many in Londonthorpe as they were planted in about the 90s, so. Um, the bark has these, sort of, horizontal lines across it which are very characteristic of cherry. And as you say, it's a dark colour. This one's not as red as they come – they sometimes look a bit redder than this. 
Adam: Right. You can see, I think some of the branches have been cut off, haven’t they? And there it looks red.
Sally: Yeah, yes, you can see the sort of red tinge to the wood inside there. So, you mentioned it doesn't have any cherries on it – we’re a bit late for cherries, ‘cause they’re something that’s in season in the midsummer. That time of year, and the birds absolutely love them, so they get hoovered up as soon as they’re on the tree, basically as soon as they’re ripe. And that’s reflected in the name, the scientific name of the trees. Prunus – so that means they’re part of the plum and cherry family – and then avium is the species name, obviously referring to birds there – so how much they love the cherries.
Adam: So, so it's a good thing for the wildlife.
Sally: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam: Very nice. And then, so the leaves now. So, I know that you were previously telling me what I thought was a leaf was a leaflet – these, each individual one here is a leaf?
Sally: Yeah, these are simple leaves. So, yeah as you’d expect the stalk joins directly to the woody stem and the whole leaf beyond that is one single leaf. 
Adam: So, the definition of a leaf is something that, sort of, sprouts from a bud? [Sally: Yes, yeah] So each leaf will come from its own individual bud on this cherry. Brilliant!
Sally: Let’s head on. [laugh]
[Walking, crunching of twigs under foot] 
Sally: We’re coming up to the crab apple here.
Adam: Oh, oh, ok. So, this is a tree loaded with fruit – these tiny, tiny, mini apples. So, this is, this is [Sally: this is a crab apple] a crab apple. 
Sally: So, if you look at the leaves again, they’re very similar to the apple tree that we saw before, not much difference in the leaf. Pale on the underside, and glossy on the top [Adam: right] and arising in these little sprigs, but the apples are tiny. Um, and if we try one [laughter] they’re… I’ll try one, I'll take one for the team. 
Adam: yeah, you take one for the team [laughs] 
Sally: and you’ll tell by my reaction…
Adam: Oh okay, go on then…
[Laughter, inaudible] 
Adam: It’s a lifetime of going ‘never eat anything’, well together. Sally: Together.
Adam and Sally: Okay. One, two, three…
[Crunch, chomping]
Adam: Urgh, not keen on, I dunno its unusual. 
Sally: It’s the aftertaste. 
Adam: It’s unusual. It… hmmm. 
Sally: It gets more sour, I think, the more you chew it. 
Adam: It does. It does a bit. 
Sally: Not as nice as the one that has been bred. 
Adam: It’s not as nice. It’s a bit odd in a sense that no one ever sells crab apples. You know, I mean.
Sally: Yeah. You can make this jelly. 
Adam: crab apple jelly, I've heard of that. 
Sally: Anything tastes nice when you bung a load of sugar on top. 
Adam: Yes, that’s true, that’s true.
[Laughter]
Adam: [joking] You could just eat the leaves, take the leaves and chuck a load of sugar on, I don't know why. Now, I think I've had my fill…
Sally: Strangely morish. 
Adam: No, not for me. I'll stay with my apple.
[Laughter]
Sally: They’ve definitely got a bitter sour kick, haven’t they? 
Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sally: Not as sweet. 
Adam: Is it okay if I just throw this into the verge for the animals? 
Sally: There’s lots of windfall ones down there anyway. 
Adam: I can see. Yeah, you don't have a cup of tea to take away the taste, do you? [Laughter] No, no. So, there we are. 
Sally: So, that was to demonstrate the difference between a domestic apple and the crab apple. Which of course, is one of the ancestors of the domestic apple.
Adam: Is it? [Laugh] I’ve been offered a polo to take away some of the taste. Oh, go on, go on, I will have one. I said no, I will have one. That’s very kind, thank you.
[Unwrapping a polo, laughter]
[Walking]
Adam: Right, we’ve come up to a very different looking one, which has got very particular leaves and tiny little red berries. I know that you don’t like to reveal the tree at the beginning because we love the drama of it! Go on then, you talk me through this tree. 
Sally: Okay, so this one’s hawthorn. [Adam: Ahh right.] A common component of hedgerows up and down the country. Also known as quickthorn, sometimes, because it does grow very quickly. This shows an example of how they can grow if they're not kept trim into a hedgerow. So yes, there's that shrubby growth habit, even though it's not being cut. And the leaves are very small. Yet another member of the rose family and the leaves are, we describe as lobed, so it has these, sort of, sticking out sections. 
Adam: They’re much smaller. How ignorant a statement is it that there's a similarity between this and an oak leaf? 
Sally: Yeah, not too ignorant. 
Adam: Not too ignorant. 
Sally: Not too ignorant because they’re both lobed, both lobed leaves, but the size is very different.
Adam: This is much smaller.
Sally: Um. So lovely autumn colour as you can see, they’re going yellow in colour. So, if you're thinking about managing a hedgerow for wildlife. You want to make sure that the tree is allowed to produce its flowers and then later in the year produce berries. And hawthorn and another hedgerow species in the UK, like blackthorn, which we might see some later, they produce their flowers only on the previous year's growth of wood. Which means if they’re flailed annually – every year that new bit of growth gets chopped back to where it was at the beginning of the year, and therefore it’s never allowed to flower and therefore set berries. So, the pollinators suffer from that, and the birds suffer because they don't have the berries. The berries are a really important winter food.
Adam: So, it’s important actually, from a nature point of view, for this to be a bit untidy. If you keep it too manicured, it'll never flower, it will never have berries.
Sally: Yeah, and you can. The advice is that hedgerows – if you cut them every three years, but you don't have to let them go out of control, you can cut one side one year, and then the top and then the next side, so that every year there's always some availability for wildlife.
Adam: Okay that’s a good idea.
[Voices]
Adam: I think there’s a dog called Ian that’s got lost [Laughter]. So, if you’ve just heard that? Come here, Ian. Either it’s a wayward husband or a wayward dog [Laughter]. Either of which we’re going to pass them shortly… Ian, Ian looks like a dog! What an unusual name for a dog… Hello Ian! [Laughter] No, Ian’s not interested, he’s off! 
[Laughter, voices, walking]
Adam: So, we’ve made another stop. So again, very different look. So, do you want to describe it before we get to what it is?
Sally: Okay, yeah, this might be one. This is a very common one. I'd say this is in the top two, top three.
Adam: It’s so embarrassing, I don’t even know what it is. 
Sally: You haven’t got a clue, no?
Adam: I’m an idiot, so no…
Sally: So, if I if I say it's silver does that give you an idea?
Adam: Birch!
Sally: It’s a silver birch!
Adam: Aww, yes, that helps me along, if only you were there during my O levels.
[Laughter]
Adam: So yes, so it's got a very, it's got this very slender, it’s got one very small, sort of, main trunk, which is silver. It's got, are they called catskills? 
Sally: Catkins! 
Adam: Catkins! Sorry! Catkins, how would you describe these then?
Sally: Yeah, I guess it's like a little sausage shape hanging down. The ones that we’re looking at are from the previous year so they’re very, sort of, dried up.
Adam: And these are the seeds are they or…
Sally: Yes, yes. So, they’re the flowering part. In the spring they look, sort of, yellow and fresh. They release their pollen, so we’ve got a little gust of wind to demonstrate how the seeds disperse, and how the pollen is dispersed as well in this species. So, a wood that is dominated by a lot of young, densely populated birch trees - you can kind of get the idea that's probably a naturally regenerated woodland because it's a good pioneer at covering new ground.
Adam: And again, does it fruit or anything? Is it good for wildlife if there’s something for birds and wildlife to eat off this?
Sally: It's a really popular one with blue tits because… not because of the fruit, but because it's really popular with insects. So, after oak, birch supports lots and lots of different insect species. Oak supports the most, and ash as well, and birch is definitely up there.
Adam: But why? Why is it? Why is it so supportive if there…? I mean, if there’s no fruit on the thing? Surely something like cherry or apple – that would support most because it’s easy to eat?
Sally: Yeah. Well, the insects are after the leaves and the sap and that sort of thing. So like aphids, caterpillars… [Adam: They like this.] So, for the birds that eat aphids, caterpillars – like blue tits – especially in the spring when they’re feeding their chicks it’s a really important species.
Adam: Okay, onward.
[Walking]
Sally: Hello again, so you can’t see a huge amount of acorns on this one.
Adam: Oh well, you’ve given it away! You always like keeping us in suspense, but I know therefore we are looking at an oak. So, the oak leaf is, sort of, our national symbol. I mean it's a symbol of Woodland Trust anyway. [Sally: Exactly] You might as well describe them though, for those that don’t know much about the oak. 
Sally: So, in this part of the country, we’re in the East Midlands, you’re likely to see English oak, and that's characterised by a leaf, which goes all the way up to the woody stem. There isn't any exposed bare leafstalk in between. And on the acorns – the acorn comes with a stem. Which is, that is the peduncle. Hence peduncular oak. [Laughter]
Adam: That just reminded me of my French and German lessons. I’m feeling a bit lost, but okay, but lots of other people won’t be lost. 
[Walking]
Adam: So, we’ve come across a clump of trees that are very similar. Ah, they’ve all got little red berries on. An erm, I’m trying to see. Ah, lovely little leaves. Now! Hold on a second. Hold on a second here, see I am already learning. I would say this was ten leaves, but actually, this is one leaf, and these are leaflets, aren’t they? 
Sally: Indeed, yep, you got it! 
Adam: I’ve jumped to the top of the class! Okay, so that's very good. So, there's a, there's a stem leading from the main woody, woody branch and on that has a little collection of little leaves, which are called leaflets. So what tree is this?
Sally: So, as you really correctly described that it's very similar in leaf shape to the ash that we saw before. Which gives rise to one of the common names of this species, which is mountain ash, sometimes people describe it. But the most commonly used name is rowan. [Adam: Right] So, it's a small tree. As we looking around here, it's kind of, it's really standing out as part of the understory here, under these taller ash and birch trees, because they’ve all gone this really lovely orangey russet colour in their autumn glory. [Inaudible]
Adam: Yes, they’re turning quicker than the other trees, aren’t they? 
Sally: Mmm. And their really bright berries stand out as well in these lovely clusters of red…
Adam: I’ve seen, I’ve seen rowans that looks a lot nicer. These look a bit bedraggled. Is that part of this particular tree or is that the nature of the rowan? 
Sally: I think it's because of the situation they’ve grown in here. They’re under quite a bit of shade under other trees.
Adam: So, we've got these leaves, they have little red berries on them and the main trunk thin, and well here, it’s sort of, a rusty green colour. Is that fairly typical?
Sally: Mmm. Quite a pale, sort of, colour, and quite smooth. Erm but, they never grow into a big tree I would say, is one of the key features of them. 
Adam: And er, good for nature?
Sally: Yeah, so we can see all the berries here, loved by blackbirds. They are quite a common tree for people to plant in their garden coz they don't grow too big. So yeah, lovely for attracting the birds. 
Adam: Very good. [Gap] OK, so we’ve come to another oak – very low. Now, this is interesting, isn’t it? So, you can tell it’s an oak – very big substantial leaves. 
Sally: Mmm, it looks very healthy, doesn’t it? 
Adam: It does, except what's odd is that all the branches start really low down. [Sally: yeah] It feels like, I dunno, has man got involved here, so has it been cut back? This is odd!
Sally: Yeah, well, it's a really interesting point that you make because it shows how the situation that tree is growing in really affects its growth habit. So, the oak that we saw before was growing in woodland in dense situation with other trees in.
Adam: So, you have four, five foot at least of tree trunk before you got any branches? 
Sally: Yep. 
Adam: This branch starts about ten centimetres off the ground.
Sally: Yeah. So, because that one that we saw before was growing in the woodlands. It's grown competing for light. So, it's put all its energy into growing upwards – tall and thin – which is good for timber. That's what a forester would appreciate in a tree. 
Adam: This has grown out.
Sally: Whereas this one, because it's in an open space, it’s had space to spread its wings as it were, to spread its branches out and to really create this kind of bushy habit. And although this is, this one's quite young, this is almost, I would describe it as like a proto-ancient tree. It could, this one has the potential because it's grown in this open situation and with a real sort of broad base, stocky, stout growth habit, it has the potential to get a lot older. 
Adam: This is gonna be very stable. 
Sally: Yeah.
Adam: It’s also a fun tree, to go… I mean I could climb to the top of this tree, almost… just, because it’s about five foot high. [Laughter] This is sort of fun. I could imagine kids hiding in there, really lovely. 
So, I didn’t realise, so, if you happen to be planting trees, you know, if you’re lucky enough to have a garden where you can plant trees, and you wanted this sort of thing, you’d put it in by itself. And it’d grow nice and short, big round and lots of bushy sort of stuff, because it's not competing, it’s putting its energy elsewhere.
Sally: That’s it. It’s, sort of, characteristic of a type of habitat that we call wood pasture, which is often… you'll see at stately homes like in the nearby Belton estate, you get a scattered collection of usually oak trees in an open grazed landscape, and they’re… usually, they’re very old because they were planted or established a long time ago. And because they grow in the open area, they've withstood the test of time, so if they’re tall and spindly they get blown over a lot more easily. But they last a lot longer when they’re grown in the open. 
Adam: Fantastic, okay, I’ll… I’m just going to take a photo of this as well. [Gap] There we are. You’ve gotta stand there so I’ve got something to scale [laughter]. Otherwise, it could be thirty foot high! There we are, there we are, got it. [Laughter]
[Pause]
So, loads of trees, you’ve stopped by another one, which is very, I mean it's very low. I can't even see the trunk here because of the leaves. But it also stretches quite high, very bush-like, quite large leaves. I'll, I'll let you do the rest [laugh].
Sally: Mmm, do you have any clue on it?
Adam: It’s got these things that I’ll mispronounce, I’m going to mispronounce again. Catkills? 
Sally: Catkins. 
Adam: Catkins. So, these are the seeds, but these are much prettier. Very small, delicate ones, umm err, there are individual quite large hand-shaped leaves. [Sally: They’re broad.] Yes broad leaves. 
Sally: Shall I put you out of your misery?
Adam: Yeah, go on then… [laughter]
Sally: It’s hazel, this one [Adam: Right] So, you’re very correct to observe that it's growing in, again, a shrublike habit.
Adam: That’s normal… that’s not just because of the way this tree is? 
Sally: Yeah, they have the habit of growing in that, kind of, [Adam: Very low down] shape. They’re quite often coppiced and if you go to an ancient woodland the traditional management practice of managing a woodland would be coppicing the hazel. 
Adam: Don’t you get hazel that you make fences out of and stuff?
Sally: Yes. Yeah, that’s it!
Adam: Is it very bendy, the wood? 
Sally: Yes so, the young… the reason why they would coppice it is to get the regrowth that sprouts back. It’s then in narrow, sort of, poles [Adam: Right] and has that flexible property. Um, yeah, so also good for hazelnuts – your Ferrero Rocher [laugh]. I don’t know if we are allowed to advertise on this [laugh]. 
Adam: Yes, that’s fine… The ambassador likes them, and other nut-based chocolates are available, I suppose we should say. Okay no hazelnuts at the moment, too early for that, or too late? 
Sally: I would say that it already is probably, you have to look on the bottom of the branches…
Adam: It’s the right time but someone has nicked them all. 
Sally: It’s the right time but it could be the squirrels. 
Adam: The squirrels have been here before us. 
Sally: Yeah! Grey squirrels will take them even before they are ripe. They will take them when they are still green. So, it's quite often a bit of a challenge to actually find any nuts, but if you do, they’re in a little cluster, usually of three and they have a kind of, little frilly outer case to them and then a hazelnut, well you know what a hazelnut looks like? 
Adam: I do know what a hazelnut looks like! Well look, I think you promised me ten trees, but we’re just not going to have time to do them all. So, we might have to do another podcast. We won't get another one in this year. We’ll have to wait until the next leaf season. 
Sally: We could do a winter, a spring…
Adam: I’d have to say I’d love to do a winter one, but aren’t you just looking at bare trunks?
Sally: Winter is, yeah, next level up [laugh].
Adam: Could you identify the trees in winter? 
Sally: Yeah, [inaudible]
Adam: Ah you see now; you see you shouldn’t have said that! [Laughter] You shouldn’t have said it, because I will come back then, and we’ll see how good you are at identifying completely bare trees. I’d think that’d be quite an interesting thing to do.
Sally: I’d have to brush up. There are keys and guide that can help you do it.
Adam: Well, and you say that, and of course the Woodland Trust has its own tree identifier app [Sally: it does] and there are others out there, there are books as well, you can use… as well as the blog that goes along with this – photos will be on there! 
Sally: In fact, um, if you become a member of the Woodland Trust, you get a free little swatch book, which is like a pocket guide with the most common trees that you are likely to see on there, so you’ll be always armed, always armed!
Adam: Do you know I’m not sure I got that? Maybe, I don’t know! An outrage! [Laughter] I probably got it and lost it is the truth! Probably got it and lost it. [Laughter] Anyway, well look… 
Sally: Perhaps we’ll try and find you a new one. 
Adam: Okay, that will be very kind. Okay good, so look I have learned a properly enormous amount, I’m not just saying this, a properly enormous amount today. I’m gonna listen back to what you say and make some notes as well, because I don’t know, I don’t have a professional interest in this at all, but I think it’s quite nice not to wander around ignorantly, and just go ‘oh that’s a hazelnut, that’s ash and there were lots of things you were saying about why that’s good for birds’. And it’s, I mean your background is science and you work for the Woodland Trust, but how difficult is it for people to get a working knowledge of this stuff? 
Sally: I don’t think it's too difficult to get to a point where you feel familiar with your local collection of trees that you see on a regular basis in your landscape and I think even if you take from this session that we’ve done – if you take a couple more that you knew before that’s getting you towards know a higher proportion of them and then you’ll know which ones you can rule out if you’re looking at something different, erm so yeah I think it’s very doable, and I agree that it makes it a lot more… your walks, they have an extra layer of meaning and you can read the landscape a bit more. 
Adam: [inaudible] And of course, I mean if you are new to the Woodland Trust or not a member, new to woods, and you want to find a woodland near you, you can go to the Woodland Trust website, which is woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood, and you can find a wood. Thank you very much, it’s been a fantastic, fantastic day out. 
Sally: You’re very welcome, Adam I’m pleased you’ve learned something. 
Adam: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners, and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes, or wherever you're listening to us, and do give us a review and a rating. 
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Charity Wakefield’s passion for the natural world shone through when we caught up at her local green space. I met the actor, environmentalist and Woodland Trust ambassador at Peckham Rye Park to talk about trees, wildlife and acting.

Charity explains how nature has made her happy since the tree-climbing, den-building days of her childhood. She is concerned that people have lost their connection with the environment, but is hopeful for the future and encourages us to recognise that we can all make a difference. She believes in ‘people power’. We also talk eco-friendly fashion, filming comedy-drama The Great and climbing a tree to learn her lines in Lewisham!

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.
Adam: Charity Wakefield is an actor, environmentalist and Woodland Trust ambassador. She starred in BBC One’s production of Rapunzel, Constance in The Three Musketeers at the Bristol Old Vic, and Elaine in the Graduate at the New Vic. She had a lead role as Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and has been in Doctor Who, the Halcyon, Bounty Hunters, amongst other productions. And she’s now starring in the TV series, The Great about Catherine the Great.
Well, I met her at her local park to talk about acting and the importance of the natural world.
Charity: So now we are at Peckham Ride Park, which has been my local park for most of my time in London. I now have a baby so there’s lots of kinds of mother and baby groups around the area. I have lots of friends here still.
Adam: Are you a country girl or did you grow up in the city, or?
Charity: Erm, I, I never thought of myself as a country girl. I did grow up though in and around East Sussex. I used to live in a couple of different places down there. We moved a bit as a kid.
Adam: Sorry, why don’t you, you grew up in the country, why did you not think of yourself as a…
Charity: I don’t know
Adam: You know you thought of yourself as you felt your inner urban woman early on?
Charity: I just don’t think I grew up with any sense of identity if I’m honest, because I also live a little bit in Spain when I was very small. And like I said we moved around quite a lot.
So actually I’m an actress and I trained at drama school and going to drama school at the time of going to university for most people if you do that, that was the first time I really had this interest to work out where I was from, or you know you kind of try to identify yourself by telling each other, and also drama school, in particular, you’re looking at different kind of life experiences and personality traits, because it’s material for you, right? So, you start kind of realising ‘oh I that this background or that background’.
Yeah, for me, being from the countryside just meant desperate driving as soon as I can. I could drive about a week after my birthday because I had secret driving lessons with friends and my dad and stuff. Yeah, I guess I have always loved the countryside and I sort of you know had friends you know the family were farmers and we used to go and make camps in the woods.
Adam: Well, that’s good, and talking of woods we seem to be, what’s down there? That’s a very wooded area, shall we go, you lead on, but shall we go down there? Or
Charity: This is the Common, this is Peckham Ride Common, and erm I think it was, has been around for at least a couple of hundred years and it’s a really big open space with some really huge trees in the middle. They’re probably like, lots of them are London planes and oak trees, and I think this section we’re about to walk into was actually sort of closed off at the beginning I think it was a big common and this was owned by an estate. A sort of family estate and then opened a bit later which is why as you can see it is much more formal
Adam: I was going to say, so we are leaving a sort of really a very large green area with the Shard poking its head above the trees, so your urban environment, but walking into this much more formal sculptured…
Charity: And actually you can walk the whole perimeter of this, and this is quite close to the road here but the other side is as you can see really big open and free, so it must have been quite weird at sort of the end of the 1800s, I suppose that kind of bridge between a really rich family that owned this huge part of the park in the middle, so this is yeah, now we are under these beautiful red-leaved trees, you probably know what that tree is? [Laugh]
Adam: No, no, no, no, let’s not embarrass each other by [Laugh]
Charity: [Laugh] Okay no tree testing
Adam: No tree testing [Laugh]
Charity: Okay
Adam: Well, this is, this is beautiful, so let’s… there’s a lovely, lovely bench with a dedication actually, some flowers connected to that. So why don’t we have a sit down here and just have a chat?
So, first of all, you mentioned you went to drama school, what drama school was it?
Charity: I went to the Oxford School of Drama, which was the smallest, most obscure place I could have probably have found [Laugh] but it probably was the best place for me actually. It’s funny, sometimes what’s for you won’t pass you as they say, erm a tiny drama school in the middle of the north of Oxfordshire. Acting is really hard and part of it is the marathon of it and the difficulties of getting jobs and everybody says this but failing continually and feeling like you haven’t actually achieved things perfectly. In the theatre that means doing a show and there being some moments during the night where you think ‘uh that didn’t work out right’ and you have to be that kind of person that is interested in those kinds of faults and failures and wants to try different things and fix things and part of gaining that resilience is what I think drama school is all about.
Adam: I mean apart from, I do want to talk to you more about your acting, but apart from that you do have what I see as quite a close connection to nature, reading a lot of your social media and learning about your activities, so tell me a bit about that, what is it? What is that connection and why do you feel it?
Charity: I think growing up, albeit in a kind of little village or a town, but kind of in the countryside it was quite… it was a bit freer back then, I think it was different days, the early 80s. being allowed to sort of wander off, with friends and go into kind of woodlands and stuff. I think, I just feel very happy when I am in nature and I am interested in the differences, everything is growing and changing all the time. And it was interesting I went to LA once, and I thought this is so strange to me because the seasons aren’t so apparent. Particularly when you live in the countryside your so kind of affected by those changes and erm I really love animals and I love knowing the circle of life, like where those animals came from, how they’re are fed, what they do naturally, and then getting older you start to understand a bit more about the history and human history and how we have you know got to where we are today the kind of beginnings of farming and how society functions and unfortunately we are at a point now where we’ve outgrown ourselves, and how do we kind of pair that back? How do we get back?
Adam: When you say we’ve outgrown ourselves what do you mean?
Charity: I think humans have outgrown ourselves in a sense I think
Adam: In what sense?
Charity: In the sense that we’ve lost track I think of the essence of how you, I think yeah, we’ve lost track of how life is interconnected with nature. Because we’re pushing technology further and further and some people are saying the answer is to eventually get into space rockets and go and start a new community on Mars and to me that’s mad because I feel like we have everything that we need on this planet. And we just need to reconnect everything.
Adam: Why do you think that disconnection has happened then
Charity: Yeah well, I think it’s a big question. Because I think it happens on so many levels. I think that there is a disconnect with people who are very very fortunate and have a hell of a lot of money, and in some ways don’t notice the effect that their companies or their personal lives might be having on the environment because they are so loaded that they get given their food people and they probably never see plastic packaging to know that it exists because they are just delivered things
Adam: Right
Charity: and they don’t really realise the impact that they’re having, they’re living kind of you know the high life
Adam: Sure, do you think we’re all living that sort of life?
Charity: No, I don’t
Adam: Or it’s just the 1%, or the quarter of the 1%?
Charity: No, I don’t, I think there are lots of people that are the absolute opposite. They haven’t got the time, the money and the education to be able to do anything about it even if they did notice that there is an issue.
Adam: And yet it is curious that isn’t it, because and yet David Attenborough the national hero, his television programmes are all watched, and you know
Charity: But they’re not watched by everybody.
Adam: They’re not watched by everybody but there seems… I mean I get the feeling that you know there’s this weird thing where everybody’s talking about the environment and very concerned about it, even if perhaps if we’re not changing our lifestyle, but my, my sort of view is that people do get it even if they’re not changing their behaviour. You, you feel differently, I think.
Charity: I think that there’s, I think there’s lots of people on those both extremes that don’t get it at all and I also see lots and lots of people living on the poverty line, particularly where I live in the Borough of Lewisham, who are, and I know some people are working crazy hours and don’t have time to think about it. About any kind of impact, and certainly don’t have time to do complicated recycling or and they don’t have the budget to be able to shop in a kind of, what we would probably on our middle-class wage perceive as a kind of eco conscious way. And because what’s difficult is even if you do do that it’s very hard to sort of balance what is the best consumer choice to make. As we all know, so we’re in a difficult way, but what I do believe is that I believe in people power, and I as you say David Attenborough has made a huge impact and it is much more in the mainstream, hugely so in the mainstream in the last couple of year, and I do think its down to kind of lockdown and people staying at home and having the chance to stop and think and reconnect with their immediate environment but whether that’s in a high-rise flat looking out listening to the lack of airplanes, being able to hear nature more, or somebody that’s got, you know, fifty acres and has decided to buy a diamond Jubilee woodland for the Woodland Trust, you know, that there, I think we are kind of you united as we are the people who had a chance to stop and listen and look and then it’s about people that are in positions of power and money to give us a direction to go in. to give us a positive idea
Adam: So, apart from being intellectually being engaged with this, you’re worried about it, you’re clearly worried about it, you do a lot of things.
Charity: mmm
Adam: actually, so tell me about the lots of things you do
Charity: err well I really love… I’ve always…So, fashion is a part of my job in the sense that I have to wear lots of different clothes, and um for my work
Adam: well then you were recently in The Great
Charity: That’s right so I do a TV show, period TV show, and so I
Adam: So, there’s lots of costumes
Charity: there’s lots of costumes, I don’t really have control over where those costumes are made and bought, but sometimes I do so, for example, if I’m producing a film or if I’m in a low-budget theatre production, I might provide my own clothes for that theatre production, and if producing then I am certainly in charge of deciding where we can get clothes, so for example, we go to charity shops and second-hand places because there is so much stuff in the world already. And I try to do that in my personal life.
Adam: But do you have a label, a fashion label?
Charity: No, nothing like that no
Adam: But you, but you talk a lot about conscientious fashion on social media
Charity: Yeh, I do because erm, …. Erm I am looking for the word, influencers! And stuff like that because I get approached for things like that and so I’m very conscious that If I am going to be in front of any kind of camera people are going to make a judgment or think that might be a good idea to wear, so I try to conscious about what I’m wearing if in the public in any way. And really that’s just an extension of my real life, I’ve always shopped in charity shops, when I was growing up that was because we didn’t have any money, so my clothes were given to me by other families, or when I first started to work, which was around fourteen, I worked in a strawberry farm – that was my first job! And my second job was in another strawberry farm, picking strawberries and my third job was the same strawberry farm but in the grocery shop.
Adam: Okay, you got promoted!
Charity: Promoted
Adam: Promoted out of the fields!
Charity: Absolutely, literally up the hill
Adam: and
Charity: I’ve become extremely aware of how difficult it is to manage woodland, and I didn’t even know that as a concept, I just thought that big areas or parkland or woodland or farmland, I had not concept really of how that was looked after, and that’s one thing that I think is I don’t know, its both inspired me and made me realise what a huge challenge it is to be able to reforest large areas and the other fact of everything being so slow – trees reaching their maturity at such a slow rate – and that being a very difficult kind of challenge to sort of ask people to become involved with because I think when you’re asking people to you know kind of sympathise with a charity or donate money to a charity in some ways its more difficult to say this is an extremely slow process but we need your help urgently… so it has been interesting to learn about that side of things. And I’ve also been deeply shocked and saddened about how many of our ancient woodlands and hedgerows and trees that are still being cut down in this country, partly for huge roadways but partly for new buildings and farmland and that does feel quite urgent to me. But yeah I’ve learnt a lot. I think one of my favourite things has been seeing the tree listening which I put on my Instagram if anyone wants to have a look
Adam: So, tell me about tree listening.
Charity: so, there’s a way to hear the water being filtered up and down trees and it’s the most beautiful sound and to me, it’s a sound that I could go to sleep to. I keep thinking, I must try and find if there’s a recording online that I can grab and put on my phone to listen to at night-time. And it gives you that sense of the tree being alive in the here and now. Trees grow so slowly it’s sometimes quite difficult to think if the as, as kind of, living in the same time zone as us. So, hearing that, that’s a very present sound really, I don’t know, it makes you… it makes you want to hug the tree even more [laugh]
Adam: Are you a bit of a tree hugger?
Charity: Yeah, yeah, I am!
Adam: Do people spot you in Peckham? Strange woman hugging trees?
Charity: I do sometimes do that, the weird thing is, this was, I was in a different park in Lewisham, and I’d actually climbed the tree because I just felt like it and I also had some lines to learn. And it was quite an empty park and I thought well this is fine, and I was in a tree learning my lines and a lady came and she saw my bags on the floor and she was so freaked out she just looked up and saw me in this tree, and I have to say it was a weird sight. I have to really say
Adam: [Laugh]
Charity: This is so weird, I’m an actress and I don’t know what I’m doing, sorry
Yeah, I just, yeah, I love…I think it was also, when I was growing up, a bit of a place to kind of go and hide, you know if you’re kind of stressed out or worried as a kid, and rather than run away, go and climb a tree and be up really high – it completely changes your perspective.
Adam: Has having a child changed your perspective at all?
Charity: I think it just strengthened my love of nature because it’s the first thing that you teach kids about. All of the books that people give you are all about spotting different animals and trees, and the sunshine and the bees, everything he loves is related to outdoors, I mean that’s, it’s his first summer, he’s fifteen months old and erm I’ve moved to a new house recently and been trying to work the garden a bit because it was very very overgrown. So, it’s been my great pleasure to be outside and doing lots of digging and his first proper words has been digging, dig, dig, because he heard me say digging and he just started saying dig, dig, dig. [Laugh]
Adam: Fantastic
Charity: He said that before mummy or daddy.
Adam: So, are you optimistic, I mean all those things you talked about erm are you optimistic that the world for your child will actually, things will get better during his early life? Or not?
Charity: I feel burdened with the worry of it, and I try to not think about it, because the world is huge and there’s only so much, I can do. I do feel optimistic in the human endeavour and human invention and ingenuity. But I am sad that it’s going to get to a point of huge environmental catastrophe before real change is made by our governing bodies. But then if you look back at the pictures just pre-industrial revolution of these thousands and thousands of huge billowing chimney pots in London and you know, they’re not there now, and the world is a lot greener than it was then, at least in cities. So, I kind of, yeah, I have hope otherwise you know… what’s the point?
Adam: I mean it’s interesting isn’t it, there’s… I often think about how to shape the narrative here because I think often the narrative of ecology and the environment is one of ‘there’s an impending disaster’ you know ‘it’s all terrible’ and I’m not saying that’s not true, but I think it’s hard for people to engage with because it’s like ‘well what, what can I do about that?’ and I think it was, hopefully, I got this right, I think it was Barrack Obama who wrote a book on it called the Audacity of Hope and you talked about hope and it is this sort of weird thing, actually to be hopeful is an extraordinary thing, it is audacious to be hopeful and that might be, might be a better message actually, that there is this big challenge and actually the audacity of hope in what can, can we do, individually? Individuals can make a difference. You know yes joining the Trust and what have you, and doing other things, and planting a single tree
Charity: I think you also have to look after yourself as a human in the world. Try to give yourself time and love and energy. Then you’ll be in a really good spot to be able to help other things and other people and the environment. It’s very difficult like I say if you’re on the breadline and you’re exhausted to actually have the headspace and the energy to do stuff. And you know, and so those people that are unable to do that we need to, I do believe, socially we need to enable people to be able to care for the environment. If you’re in a position where you do have enough money, and you do have enough time, and you still feel worried, then there’s tons you can do on a day-to-day level. And I actually think that action is much more infectious than talking. I know we’re talking here today, but the best thing that I have probably ever done is about two or three years ago I just wrote on Twitter I’m giving up plastic for the month of January, this was before it was kind of fashionable to that and rather than saying everyone should do this, everyone should do that, I just said ‘this is what I’m doing’. I didn’t even talk about it. I just said ‘I’m gonna do this’ and so many of my friend’s a couple of months later said ‘oo you said that and actually, I tried it as well’, they didn’t even talk to me about it they just kind of tried it. They started, whenever they came over, they said ‘we I didn’t bring, I didn’t buy any plastic because I knew you weren’t interested’ I thought wow! You just actually have to put a stick in the mud sometimes and say this is what I’m doing, and try to have the energy to stick to it, and of course, we have… we can’t be perfect… the world is set up in a certain way at the moment as consumers, as everything is wrapped in plastic, it’s very difficult to get around without, you know in lots of places, without a car because public transport has a lot to be desired and it’s expensive, but if you can try to support things that are doing the right thing, that will slowly, slowly build, and if you can have joy in that, that builds as well.
Adam: It is interesting to me, we tend to do what our friends do, or people we know do, so, and that’s why a single person can make a difference isn’t it because, a friend will copy you. And suddenly what you do isn’t a single thing, it’s a big thing.
That’s, that’s amazing.
So, look we’re in this park which is very nice. I’m not sure I’ve met one leaf yet; we’re meant to be walking around and I lazily dragged you to this chair! But, have you, I mean there’s lots of Woodland Trust places outside of London, they are quite close but also quite far. Have you been to many? Are there any that stick in your mind?
Charity: I’ve been to Hainault, and I’ve been to Langley Vale. What I would love to do is go to Scotland, I know there’s lots of work happening there at the moment and I’d really like to visit, it’s really interesting to see the difference between a very very ancient woodland and something that’s quite newly developed, and I know that there are some places that the Woodland Trust are trying to connect two different forests, and I think, is it the pine martin (?) that they are trying to get to, sort of, repopulate? And it’s very difficult to do that because they like travelling and so you have to have a long distance in between, you know, one dense forest and another dense forest for them to actually want to stick around. So, I would kinda like to see that in action.
Adam: Well, the Langley Vale Forest, I have just been to, and it features in our previous podcast. All the commemoration of the First World War. Which I think was one of the most interesting and sort of, I don’t know, shocking, I don’t know, because there’s a lot of… it commemorates really terrible events, but in a sort of, living memory, which I thought was really forceful. And that’s I think one of the more interesting podcasts so if you listen to this one, but also that one, I also thought that one was great.
So, it’s amazing to sort of talk to you about this, but as you were saying, you are an exceptionally busy actor as well, so you’re doing… is The Great still in production?
Charity: It is, we’re filming season three at the moment.
Adam: Wow, so how many programmes in a season?
Charity: so, there’s ten episodes in each season, and the first two have come out via Hulu, and, in America and STARZPLAY, the first season was out on Channel 4 a couple of years ago and the second season is coming out this summer, on Channel 4, and we’re filming season three. So, um, it’s a lot of fun, it’s very silly and it was lovely to be doing something, I was so lucky to be working during the last lockdown, albeit with really rigorous Covid protocols in place, we managed to get it done.
Adam: Well fantastic, I will watch out for the next season! And all of your stuff on social media and everything. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you Charity, thank you very much!
Charity: Thanks.
Well thanks to Charity for taking me on a tour of her local small, wooded area in South London, and do remember if you want to find a wood near you, well the Woodland Trust has a website to help. Just go to woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Until next time happy wandering.
Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners, and volunteers and don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes, or wherever you're listening to us, and do give us a review and a rating.
And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walks special. Or send an email with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk and we look forward to hearing from you.

Langley Vale Wood is a really special place. Created as part of the Trust’s First World War Centenary Woods project, it’s a natural living legacy for the fallen that symbolises peace and hope. Memorials offer space to remember in an evocative and moving tribute. As well as these important reflections on the past, the site has a bright future. Previously an arable farm that became non-viable, nature is now thriving, with butterfly, bird and rare plant numbers all up.

Join site manager Guy Kent and volunteer David Hatcher to explore the ‘Regiment of Trees’, the ‘Witness’ memorial and Jutland Wood. Discover too how the site is being transformed into a peaceful oasis for people and nature and why some of these fields are internationally important.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

Voiceover: You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.
Adam: Hello! I've got to start by telling you this. I have driven to Langley Vale today and I've been driving through suburban London, really not very much aware of my surroundings, and you come up this hill and suddenly everything falls away and you burst out onto the top of the hill and it's all sky and Epsom Downs. And the racecourse is just ahead of you! And it dramatically changes. So, it's quite, it's quite an entrance into the Langley Vale forest area.
I've come to meet, well, a couple of people here. I’ve drawn up next to a farm, I don’t really know where they are, but it gives me a moment to tell you a little bit about the Langley Vale project which is amazing.
It's a lovely thought behind it, because it is about honouring those who died in the First World War, and of course, there are many ways in which we honour and remember the people whose lives were changed forever during that global conflict. There are war memorials, headstones, poetry and paintings – and those man-made accolades – they capture all the names, the dates, the emotions and the places. And of course, they are vital in recording and recounting the difficult and very harrowing experiences from that conflict.
But, what this venture, I think, wanted to achieve with its First World War Centenary Woods Project was a natural, living legacy for the fallen. Flourishing places that symbolise peace and hope, as well as remembering and marking the dreadful events of war, but doing that in the shape of nature and hope for the future. Both now and for many, many generations to come, providing havens for wildlife and for people – and I'm one of those people – and so it’s a great project, it's in its very early stages, but it’s a great opportunity, I think, to have a look around today. So, oh! There's two people wandering down the road there in shorts, I think they’re hikers, I don’t think they are who I am seeing.
[Pause]
Adam: So, Guy you're the site manager here, just tell me a little bit about the site.
Guy: So, we are on the North Downs here in Surrey. It's a huge ridge of chalk that runs along southern England and down through Kent, it pops under the channel and pops up again in France. And this chalk ridge has got very special habitats on it in terms of woodland, chalk grassland, and we're very thrilled here that we've been able to buy, in 2014, a formerly intensively managed arable farm that was actually not very productive. The soils are very thin here on the hills the chalk with flints, so, pretty poor for growing crops, and we were very lucky to buy it as part of our First World War Centenary Woods project as England’s Centenary Wood.
Adam: So, tell me a bit about the Centenary Woods part of this.
Guy: So, the idea of the project was to put a new woodland in each country of the United Kingdom, that being Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. This is the England site, and it is the largest of the four sites. We've actually planted 170,000 trees here. We did go through a full Environmental Impact Assessment and this enabled us to find out where we could plant trees because there are some special habitats here, and there is a national character to the North Downs – national character being that much of the woodland is planted on the high ground and much of the lower land is actually open space, be that for arable use or pasture.
Adam: This is a Centenary Wood, so, is this just an ordinary woodland planted in the name of those who died during the First World War?
Guy: Yes. The difference is… one of the reasons this site was selected was because we do actually have history here from the First World War. We’ve got a number of memorials that I hope to show you today.
One of which commemorates a day in January 1915. Lord Kitchener inspected 20,000 troops here that had gathered and recently joined, taking up the call to join his new army. So, there were many sorts of civilians here in civilian clothing. They got up at 4am in the morning, I’m told, to all assemble here for him arriving at 10am with his equivalent French minister, and they inspected the troops for a very short period of time because they had other troops to go and inspect nearby. But many of those 20,000 actually then ended up going over, obviously, over to the frontline and many were not to return.
Adam: Shall we have a walk down? And what is there then to commemorate that? Are there, are these just trees planted in memory of that occasion, or have you got a sort of statue or something?
Guy: Yeah, well, the Regiment of Trees as we’re just about to see, as you go around the corner… An artist, we commissioned an artist called Patrick Walls who has actually created some statues for us replicating that event. So, we have men standing to attention carved out of sandstone…
Adam: Wow, yes. Just turning around the corner here and you can see this, yes, individual soldiers standing proud of a field of, actually, white daisies just emerging made from that sandstone you say?
Guy: Yes sandstone.
Adam: Sandstone soldiers. We are just walking up to them now, but behind that is all, I mean, I'm assuming this is a statue, but a statue made of trees.
Guy: Indeed, what you’re looking at there Adam is a memorial that we've called Witness. It's actually created by an artist called John Merrill and it is made up of parts of oak trees that have been assembled and it's inspired by the World War One painter Paul Nash, who was a cubist artist, and a particular painting of his called ‘Trees on the Downs’ and that's inspired by that. And we're very lucky to have included within the memorial part of an oak out of Wilfred Owen's garden.
Adam: Wow!
Guy: Yeah so it's constructed to look like trees that have been obliterated, effectively, on the frontline, very evocative.
Adam: Yes, you get very evocative pictures of a single tree either, you know, scarred black or sometimes actually still alive in a field of chaos.
Guy: That's right yeah. And that's kind of trying to illustrate that in our memorial here, and what you can do, the public can actually walk through it. We've got a couple of benches within it, actually, where people can sit and contemplate, and actually written on the inside of some of these beams that go up are actually excerpts from poems from First World War poets.
Adam: So, this first statue we’re actually standing by it’s sort of transformed in the flow of the statue – so it comes out of the ground as a sort of textured rock and as you go up 5 foot, 6 foot the statue also transforms into a man, but this man is wearing a suit and flat cap, so is a civilian.
Guy: Indeed, and that's kind of trying to illustrate the fact that many of them are just joined up and a number of them haven't even got their uniform yet.
Adam: So, let's move on, ahead of us, there’s this sort of city gent on the left but looks a bit grander, but on the right, there are obviously… these look like officers.
Guy: Yeah, the best, how I can best describe this is, that we've actually got 12 statues here and they're actually sitting among standard trees that were planted. So, we've got birch here, we've got beech, we've got whitebeam and we've got maple. But, these statues, the twelve of them, are in four lines. The guys at the back have only just joined up and they haven't had their uniform yet. And what the artist wanted to illustrate was the fact that all classes joined up at the same time. So, we have a working-class guy with his flat cap down the end there, we have our middle-class guy here with his hat on, and then we have the upper classes as well – it's meant to illustrate that everybody was in it together and joined in.
Adam: I thought this was an officer, but I can see from his insignia he's a corporal.
Guy: Indeed, and if you look at the statues Adam, as we go nearer the front to where Kitchener would have inspected, they all put the guys at the front who had all their webbing, all their uniform already, and as we move back through the lines it was less and less uniform and equipment.
Adam: It’s very evocative, I have to say, it’s much more emotional than I thought it would be. Shall we go over to the sculpture?
Guy: Yes let’s.
Adam: So, this is called ‘Witness’.
Guy: So, this is ‘Witness’ yes, and this is… John Merrill created this, he's got a yard in Wales where he works wood of this size. As you can see, it's quite a structure.
Adam: So, yes as you say this size… So, I'm very bad at judging, six… I am trying to think, how many six-foot men could you fit under here? Six, twelve, I dunno thirty foot high? Was that fair?
Guy: I tend to work in metres, I don’t know about you, but I'm going to say about six metres at its highest point.
Adam: So, it’s made of, sort of, coming into it… it's… actually, it's quite cathedral-like inside. Small but is that a fair description?
Guy: Yeah, I think so.
Adam: *inaudible* Now, every second tree here has a line of First World War poetry etched into it rather beautifully. Do you want to read just a couple out for us?
Guy: Yes… so here we have one saying: “And lying in sheer I look round at the corpses of the larches. Whom they slew to make pit-props.” [editor: Afterwards by Margaret Postgate Cole]. “At evening the autumn woodlands ring with deadly weapons. Over the golden plains and lakes…” [editor: Grodek by Georg Trakl].
Adam: Amazing, it’s an amazing place. There are a couple of benches here and these are…
Guy: These are the names of the poets. So, we have W Owen here, we have E Thomas, J W Streets, M P Cole, amongst others.
Adam: Very moving, very moving. Okay, well it’s a big site isn’t it, a big site. So, where are we going to go to next?
Guy: Well, we can walk through now Adam, we can see a new community orchard that we planted in 2017.
Adam: So, we’ve come into, well a big part of, well there are a huge number of trees here. So, is this the main planting area?
Guy: Yes, this is the main planting area. There are approximately 40,000 trees in here.
Adam: We’re quite near a lot of urban areas, but here they’ve all disappeared, and well, the field goes down and dips up again. Is that all Woodland Trust forest?
Guy: That’s right, what you can see ahead of us there is actually the first planting that we did on this site in 2014, on that hillside beyond.
Adam: 2014? So, eight, eight…
Guy: Eight years old.
Adam: [laughs] Thank you, yes mental maths took me a moment. So, the reason I was doing that, is that they look like proper trees for only eight years old.
Guy: It just shows you that obviously, you think that when we're planting all these trees now – that none of us will perhaps be here long enough to enjoy them when they’re mature trees, but I think you can see from just by looking over there that that woodland is eight years old and it's very much started to look like a woodland.
Adam: Very much so, well, brilliant. Well, very aptly I can see, starting to see poppies emerging in the fields amongst the trees. They do have this sort of sense of gravestones, in a way, don’t they? They’re sort of standing there in regimented rows amongst the poppy fields.
So, where to now?
Guy: So, we’ll go to Jutland Wood, which is our memorial to the Battle of Jutland.
Adam: The famous sea battle
Guy: Yes, it was the largest battle of the First World War which raged over two days, the 31st of May to the 1st of June 1916. We're going to meet our volunteer, lead volunteer, David Hatcher now, who's been working with us on the site for a number of years, and he's going to tell you about this memorial that we've got to the Battle of Jutland.
Adam: Right, I mean, here it's, it's different because there are these rather nice, actually, sculpted wooden stands. What are these?
Guy: Yeah, these are… actually commemorate… we've got what we call naval oaks. So, we've got a standard oak planted for each of the ships that were lost in that particular battle and we've also, between them, we've got these port holes that have been made by an artist called Andrew Lapthorn, and if I can describe those to you, they are sort of a nice piece, monolith of wood with a porthole in the middle of…, a glass porthole, that indicates how many lives were lost and it has the name of the ship.
Adam: So, this is HMS Sparrowhawk where six lives were lost, 84 survivors, but HMS Fortune next door, 67 lives lost, only ten survivors, and it just goes on all the way through.
Guy: As you walk through the feature Adam, the actual lives lost gets a bit more, bigger and bigger, and by the end it’s… there were very few survivors on some of the ships that went down, and they are illustrated on these nice portholes that commemorate that.
Adam: And this is all from the Battle of Jutland?
Guy: Battle of Jutland this is yeah.
Adam: And just at the end here HMS Queen Mary, 1,266 lives lost, only 20 survivors from 1913. Very, very difficult.
[Walking]
Guy: This memorial, actually illustrates…, is by a lady called Christine Charlesworth, and what we have here is a metal representation of a sailor from 1916 in his uniform. And that faces the woodland here, where you can see ancient semi natural woodland that would have been here in 1916. So, this sailor is looking to the past and our ancient woodland. If we look to the other side of the sailor, we have a sailor from 2016 in his uniform and he’s looking in the opposite direction, and he’s looking at our newly planted trees – looking to the future.
Adam: Let’s walk through here, and at the end of this rather… I mean it is very elegantly done but obviously sombre. But, at the end here we’re going to meet David who’s your lead volunteer.
So, David, so you’re the lead volunteer for this site? And, I know that’s, must be quite a responsibility because this is quite a site!
David: That’s very flattering - I’m a lead volunteer - I have lots of brilliant colleagues.
Adam: Really? So, how many of you are there here?
David: About seven lead volunteers, there are about one hundred volunteers on the list.
Adam: And what do you actually do here?
David: Ah well it’s a whole range of different things. As you know this was an intensively farmed arable site. And there were lots of things like old fences and other debris. It was also used as a shooting estate, so there were things left over from feeding pheasants and what have you.
Adam: Right.
David: A lot of rubbish that all had to be cleared because it’s open access land from the Woodland Trust, and we don’t want dogs running into barbed wire fences and things like that.
Adam: And it’s different from, well I think, almost any other wood. It has this reflection of World War One in it. What does that mean to you?
David: Well, it actually means a lot to me personally, because I was the first chairman of the Veteran’s Gateway. So, I had a connection with the military, and it was brilliant for me to be able to come and do something practical, rather than just sitting at a desk, to honour our veterans.
Adam: And do you notice that people bring their families here who have had grandfathers or great grandfathers who died in World War One?
David: Yes, they do and in particular we have a memorial trail in November, every year, and there’s a wreath where you can pick up a little tag and write a name on it and pin it to this wreath, and that honours one of your relatives or a friend, or somebody like that, and families come, and children love writing the names of their grandpa on and sticking it to the wreath.
Adam: And do you have a family connection here at all?
David: My father actually served in the, sorry, actually my grandfather served at the Battle of Jutland.
Adam: Wow and what did he do there?
David: He was a chief petty officer on a battleship, and he survived I am happy to say, and perhaps I would never have been here had he not, and all of my family – my father, my mother, both my grandfathers were all in the military.
Adam: And do you remember him talking to you about the Battle of Jutland?
David: He didn't, but what he did have was, he had a ceremonial sword which I loved, I loved playing with his ceremonial sword.
Adam: Gotcha. And you are still here to tell the tale! [Laughter]
David: And so are all my relatives! [Laughter]
Adam: Yes, please don’t play with ceremonial swords! [Laughter]
That’s amazing. Of course, a lot of people don’t talk about those times.
David: No.
Adam: Because it’s too traumatic, you know… as we’ve seen how many people died here.
David: Yes.
Adam: Well look, it’s a relatively new woodland and we’re just amongst, here in this bit, which commemorates Jutland, the trees are really only, some of them, poking above their really protective tubes. But what sort of changes have you seen in the last seven, eight odd years or so since it’s been planted?
David: It's changed enormously. It's quite extraordinary to see how some trees have really come on very well indeed, but also a lot of wildflowers have been sown. We have to be very careful about which we sow and where because it's also a very valuable natural wildflower site, so we don't want them getting mixed up.
Adam: So, what's your favourite part of the site then?
David: Ah well my favourite part…, I'm an amateur naturalist, so there’s the sort of dark and gloomy things that are very like ancient woodland. We call them ancient semi-natural woodland. So there is Great Hurst Wood which is one of the ancient woodlands.
Adam: Here on this site?
David: Yes, on this site. It's just over there, but we have another couple of areas that are really ancient semi-natural woodland, but actually, I love it all. There's something for everybody: there’s the skylarks that we can hear at the moment; the arable fields with very rare plants in; the very rare fungi in the woods. Actually, that line of trees that you can see behind you is something called the Sheep Walk, and the Sheep Walk is so-called because they used to drive sheep from all the way from Kent to markets in the west of the county, and they've always had that shelterbelt there – it's very narrow – so they've always had it there to protect the sheep from the sun, or the weather, or whatever. And it's the most natural bit of ancient woodland that there is, even though it's so narrow and it's fascinating what you can find under there.
Adam: And I saw you brought some binoculars with you today. So, I mean, what about sort of the birds and other animals that presumably have flourished since this was planted?
David: It's getting a lot better. The Woodland Trust has a general no chemicals and fertiliser policy and so as the soil returns to its natural state then other things that were here before, sometimes resting in the soil, are beginning to come up. We, I think, we surveyed maybe 20 species of butterflies in the first year… there are now over… 32! And there are only 56 different species over the country, so we have a jolly good proportion! We have two Red List birds at least here – skylarks and lapwings nesting.
It's all getting better; it’s getting a lot better under new management.
Adam: [chuckle] Fantastic! Well, it’s a real, a real joy to be here today. Er so, we’re here in the Jutland woodland. Where, where are we going to next do you think? Where's the best place…?
David: We’re going to have a look at one of the wonderful poppy fields.
Adam: Right.
David: Because the poppies come up just as they did in Flanders every summer and it's, it really is a sight to behold.
Adam: And is this peak poppy season?
David: It's just passed…
Adam: Just passed.
David: So, we hope they are still there and haven't been blown away.
Adam: It would be typical if I have got here and all the poppies have gone. Forget it, alright, let's go up there.
So, well this is quite something! So, we've turned into this other field, and it is a field, well never in my life have I seen so many poppies! Mainly red poppies, but then there are…, what are these amongst them?
Guy: Yeah. So, what you can see is a number of species of poppies here. The main one you can see, it's the red Flanders poppy.
Adam: And is this natural or planted because of the First World War reference?
Guy: No, it's mostly…, we did supplement this with some…, we've actually planted some of these poppy seeds, but most of them are natural and it's a direct result of the fact that we continue to cultivate the land. One of the most important conservation features we have here on site is rare arable plants. Bizarrely, these plants were once called arable weeds, but when intensification of farming began in the mid-20th century, the timing of ploughing was changed, the introduction of herbicides, all these things meant that these so-called arable weeds actually became quite rare and they were just hanging on to the edges of fields. What we've been able to do here is to continue to cultivate the land sympathetically for these plants and we now have much, much better arable plant assemblages here. We have rare arable plants here now, that mean that some of these fields are of national importance and a couple of them are of international importance, but a by-product of cultivating the land every year for these is that we get displays of poppies like this every year.
Adam: And when you cultivate, you’re talking about cultivating the land, you’re planting these poppies, or what does that mean?
Guy: No, it’s almost like replicating the fact…, it’s as if we're going to plant a crop, so we actually plough the field and then we roll it as if we're going to prepare a crop.
Adam: But you don't actually plant a crop.
Guy: No, no exactly. And then we leave it fallow and then naturally these arable plants tend to actually populate these fields. Poppies are incredibly nectar-rich, they're actually quite short-lived… Some of you may know poppies that grow in your garden, and they could be out in bloom one day and completely blown off their petals the next day. They don't, like, last very long, but they do pack a powerful punch for nectar, so definitely invertebrates… Because we don't use chemicals here anymore which would have been used constantly on this farm – and what that means is that many of these arable plants, they require low fertility otherwise they get out-competed by all the things you'd expect like nettles, docks and thistles. So as the land improves so will hopefully arable plant assemblages making them even more impressive than they already are.
Adam: But actually, as the, as the soil improves isn't that a problem for things like poppies ‘cause they'll get out-competed by other plants which thrive better?
Guy: It's a fair point, but what is actually crucial – is that to actually increase biodiversity in these fields it actually requires low nutrients. In terms of a lot of these fields, as well, we have, from years of chemical application, we have a lot of potassium, we have a lot of magnesium in them, and they have a lot of phosphorus too now. Magnesium and potassium tend to leach out of the soil so they will improve naturally, phosphorus tends to bind the soil and sticks around for a long time. So, we're trying to get these chemicals down to acceptable levels to make them more attractive for rare plants and therefore increasing biodiversity.
Adam: Well, it is, it is like a painting and I'm going to take a photo and put it on my Twitter feed. I just, [gasp] so if anyone wants to see that, head over there. But it is beautiful, properly beautiful.
I mean, so we were walking by this extraordinary painting of a poppy field to our right. It's a site which has been revolutionised because it was all arable farming less than a decade ago. What has that done for biodiversity here?
Guy: Well, as we can imagine these fields, it’s quite difficult to imagine them as we walk through them now, but these would have all been bare fields that were basically in crop production and there’s clearly been an explosion of invertebrate activity here.
We've got increasing butterfly species every year, our bird numbers are starting to go up, but also importantly we've got certain areas where habitats are being allowed to develop. So, we have a former arable field here that is now developing, it has been planted up with hazel coppice in a system we call ‘coppice with standards’, where we plant…
Adam: Coppice with standards?
Guy: Coppice with standards yeah.
Adam: Oo, well very grand!
Guy: It is! It’s an old forestry practice where they planted lots of hazel trees that would have been worked and then periodically in amongst them, there will be oak trees that would be allowed to grow longer and then harvested at a later date.
What this has meant is that we've got long grass now that is growing between these trees and that's making it much more attractive for small mammals on site.
Adam: Like what? What sort of small mammals?
Guy: Things like voles, wood mice, field voles, these sort of things that make sort of tracks and sort of tunnels within the grass.
And what that has meant is, as we go up the food chain is, that that's become more attractive now on the site for raptors. A nice story from two years ago - we have a volunteer that works with us who is a BTO bird ringer, and he sort of approached us to say “you've got barn owls nearby and your site is starting to develop nicely. How do you fancy putting up some raptor boxes to see if we can attract them in?” So, which was great, and we managed…, the local bird club donated some barn owl boxes, we put the barn owl boxes up in this field we have just talked about – the hazel coppice field – and the expert said “well they probably won't nest in it this year. They'll come and have a look…” Anyway, we put it up…, two months later… it was being used and we were able to ring those three chicks that came from that and they've been breeding ever since.
Adam: Wow, how amazing! Must be very heartening to be working on the site which is growing like that so quickly.
Guy: It is, it's amazing and when you consider that we’re within the M25, we’re very close to London, but we've got this site that is growing and it's only going to get better as we manage it sympathetically for the wildlife that it hosts.
Adam: We’re just coming round the bend and back to almost where we started into this field of standing soldiers amongst the growing trees, and the cathedral-like tree sculpture there which will take us back to the beginning. So we’ve just done a little tour…
Guy: Yeah,
Adam: So, I dunno half an hour, 40 minutes or so. Presumably, we skirted the edges of this…
Guy: You certainly have Adam! It’s a fraction of the site. We are 640 acres in size and we're just at the top part of it. This area that we've largely walked around today is very much focused on World War One and our memorials, but much of the rest of the site is, actually, is quite a bit quieter, there are fewer people around and the focus is definitely more on wildlife.
Adam: Yes, well, it has been an amazing trip, I have to say, I’ve been to lots of different Woodland Trust woods all the way up the country, to the far stretches of Scotland. I have to say I think this is my favourite. It’s quite, quite a site! And the memorial is done really tastefully and fits in with the landscape. I think this is quite, quite a site for you to manage, it's quite a thing.
Guy: It’s incredible and we are just so proud of it and we just can't wait to be able to open our car park and invite people from further afield, and not just locals who get to enjoy it as is the case at the moment.
Adam: Absolutely. Well look, thank you! It started this morning, bright sun, it looked like I shouldn’t need to bring a coat then all of a sudden, I thought “Oh my goodness”, we’re standing under a completely black cloud but it has not rained, it is not raining, we're in running distance of the car so…
Guy: Somebody's looking down on us Adam, at least for a couple of hours.
Adam: They are indeed, well thank you very much!
Voiceover: Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers and don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes, or wherever you're listening to us, and do give us a review and a rating.
And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special. Or send an email with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk and we look forward to hearing from you.

Join us at Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood, Leics to discover a thriving 10-year-old wood, chat royal trees and celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. We meet with site manager David Logan to explore the site's connections with the royal family, its special art features and some of the wildlife, sights and sounds you might encounter on a visit. 

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk.

Transcript

Voiceover: You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, like all good podcasts let's start with a story and this one obviously is about a tree. It stands in a quiet part of central London called Lincoln's Inn Fields – the centre of the legal profession.

It sits, well, just outside of a gated 11-acres of parkland in one of the otherwise busiest and noisiest parts of the country. It was planted in 1953 and since then the well-heeled men and women of the legal profession, who worked there, often sheltered under its branches, passed it by, both ignoring it and perhaps enjoying it. In the 70 years that tree has been growing, there have been many monumental events and world figures who have both entered and left the stage.

When it was first planted, Winston Churchill was Prime Minister. Since then, entering and often leaving the limelight – Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King, Yuri Gagarin, The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, John F Kennedy, video players were invented, personal computers and mobile phones were created, and there have been 15 prime ministers. But in all that time, as a living witness to that history of the new Elizabethan Age, there has been only one monarch – Queen Elizabeth II. No one has played such a long-lived part in the nation's history as the Queen.

The tree that still stands by Lincoln's Inn Fields is one of literally millions that have been planted in the name of the Queen.

Trees, of course, have an even longer perspective on time than Her Majesty but both stand as witnesses and part of history stretching back and reaching forward far beyond the timescales most of us live by.

It's very fitting, therefore, that on this Platinum Jubilee the Woodland Trust has partnered with the Queen's Green Canopy Project to invite everyone across the UK to plant a network of trees, avenues, copse, and whole woodlands, in honour of the Queen's service and legacy

From a single sapling in a garden to a whole wood, the aim is to create 70 Platinum Jubilee Woods of 70 acres each – every tree bringing benefits for people, wildlife and climate – now and for the future.

And so, I took this opportunity to visit the Trust's Diamond Jubilee Wood in Leicestershire, where I met the man responsible for looking after the woodland, David Logan.

David: So, this is Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Woods and it's a flagship site of a scheme that the Woodland Trust has to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

So, what we endeavoured to do, and we've successfully done. We created 75+ woods of 60 acres or more and they were the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Woods. And, this is the flagship one of those woods, making it the largest single-owned block of native broadleaf woodland in the National Forest area.

Adam: What immediate, I mean, we've not really gone in yet, but what immediately surprises me is this is really quite, well, it's a very young wood. Yet, it already but quite mature I mean, were these species, was this all planted?

David: You're looking at a hedgerow and beyond that are the trees at the same height as the hedgerow. So yeah no, it is to me, you know, a refute to people who say 'why bother planting woods because you never get to walk under the bows of the trees' but these, only ten years ago this was planted and when you get into the site, you're definitely in a wood now 10 years later.

Adam: those trees are all on the quite tall…

David: They must be 10-12 feet tall.

Adam: Yeah, looks even taller to me but then I'm unsure. Okay, go on, lead on. Tell me a bit about then what this site sort of is, why it's special, you know, biologically special?

David: Because of, it's big! You get that really wild feeling when you're here. So, you know, 267 hectares are completely devoted to nature. There's not, well, I don't think there's anywhere else particularly like that in this part of the country. And, so yeah, it does stand out. We get lots of different wildlife: lots of birds, lots of invertebrates, butterflies and a really good show of wildflowers as well. We will see some of them.

Adam: And what was here before? Was it just an empty field?

David: No. So, it was an open cast coal mine. So, the whole lot was owned by UK Coal and then the central part of it where the lake is was the largest hole in Europe! When it was done 750,000 tonnes of coal came out.

Adam: Wow! So, I mean, there's no sign of that at all, because open cast mining can be a real scar on the land, can't it? I mean, it doesn't look pretty and then yet is there still a hole, was that all backfilled?

David: That's all backfilled yeah so all of the substrate that wasn't coal will have been stored around the site and then all put back in the hole.

Adam: How long have you been here then?

David: So, I've been site manager for three years now, so....

Adam: Right.

David: Yeah, seen it develop. 

Adam: So, what sort of, I mean, three years is not a long time, especially in the life span of trees, but what sort of changes have you seen over that period?

David: I think the biggest one recently is we took away all of the tree tubes and the fencing that the original kind of planting scheme relied on to protect it from deer and rabbits. Yeah, which has completely changed the way the site feels. So, no more sea of plastic tubes and no more fences to get in the way. So, you can get to walk where you like now, as well as the wildlife can get around the site a bit easier, and it really has changed the way it all feels

Adam: In terms of the local community engagement and their use of this wood, what’s that like?

David: It's been great. Yeah, been great right from the outset, so, we had a lot of community involvement with the original planting and then again with extensions, voluntarily.

Adam: And how well used is it by the locals then?

David: Yeah, yeah, very well used, very rarely do you ever come to the car park and there's less than five cars in it.

Adam: We're coming to, I can see... what's that building over there? That looks very pretty!

David: So, that is what we call the welcome barn. So, I've got two buildings I've got on this site. I've got the welcome barn and I've got bird hide as well.

Adam: Wow! So, what happens? Is there someone with tea and crumpets in the welcome barn for us?

David: Unfortunately not no, but there are some interpretation panels that tell you the story of the site and a nice mosaic that was made by the volunteers as well, at the beginning of the site. And then a little compost toilet round the back!

Adam: Laughs Okay that's good, good to know, good to know! And tell me about the bird hide then.

David: So, the bird hide is yet another lovely building overlooking a lake. So, the lake was kind of formed by the sinking of the coal mine and the soil around it, and yeah, so just a nice bird hide, we’ll go and look at it.

Adam: What sort of birds do you get?

David: The most exciting bird that we've had here is a hen harrier. 

Adam: Right! Wow! And look, and this welcome barn, this also seems to be unusual for a Woodland Trust site? You don't normally see these things.

David: Don't normally get a building no, I’m lucky to have two!

Adam: And look at... really, really lovely sort of mosaic on the floor – Woodland Trust mosaic which sort of looks quite 1950s like... Do you know how long this…? This can't be that...?

David: No no, that was built when the barn was built and the site was created in 2012 and it's meant to, kind of, reflect the Roman history of the site. So, we’ve got a Roman road that we just crossed over there, and then we've got two areas of our underlining archaeology which we know are Roman on the site. And so, we know there's certainly a lot of Roman activity, hence a Romanesque kind of mosaic.

Adam: So, just explain a bit about where we are.

David: So, these are called the groves – The Royal Groves – as part of Royal Groves Walk, and as part of the creation of the site. There was a royal Grove created for each year of the Queen's reign, so, they’re in a series of circles and each one has a post and people can sponsor the grove and the post and then they get their little plaque added to the grove post for their year. I believe that certain years become more popular than others for various reasons and, but yeah, you'll see all these names. My favourite one, I think, is just this one. This grove is dedicated to the dahlia.

Adam: That’s fantastic laugh dahlia appreciation society sponsors. So, tell me a bit about the trees we're seeing here, there's clearly a whole mixture.

David: Yes. So, they’re all native broadleaf trees. We have got birch and oak going round. There is no ash in this part of the wood because ash dieback was kind of discovered just as the planting was going ahead and so we’re lucky. There is a compartment in the north which got ash put into it. You might see the occasional ash tree that's self-set. So, we've got a Jubilee Grove Trail going on at the weekend for the... to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee that's coming up, encouraging people to, kind of, wander around the trails, and we're going to have these tree rings, sections of a tree... one per decade of the Queen's reign and with various large events that happen within that decade there will be a tree ring.

Adam: Will that be permanent?

David: No, it'll just be for the month of June and there will be a large wicker crown somewhere onsite as well.

Adam: That's all happening next weekend?

David: Well, late this week, next weekend.

Adam: You've got a lot of work to do. I'm amazed you’ve got the time spare to wander around with me.

David: Yeah well. Yeah, yeah there's always... it's always a rare commodity time I'm afraid Adam.

Adam: Now you didn't design this here? You're a new boy!

David: I am a new boy here!

Adam: So, who actually designed it?

David: So, it was a lady called Kerrie who is here, here now. She knows lots more about the groves than me as the designer and helped put it all in.

Adam: Brilliant, hi Kerrie!

Kerrie: Hi Adam. I think I don't think I want to say that I designed the wood but...

Adam: I was building you up!

Kerrie: You were, thank you, but the layout of the groves and... I was certainly involved in the design of the concept and then how we spoke to individuals about whether they would like to be involved in this. So, it was an opportunity for families to dedicate their own acre of woodland and help us develop this wood, as well as being part of a feature that enables you to walk through the Queen's reign. Kind of, physically walk through every year of the Queen's reign, so it's really special.

Adam: Which is amazing, isn’t it? 

Kerrie: Yes, it is. 

Adam: Tell me a bit about this royal connection because this wasn't, sort of, just a random, sort of, marketing idea. There's a really good basis for this royal connection isn't there?

Kerrie: Absolutely, yeah so, at the Woodland Trust in 2011 we started a project to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee – so, sixty years of the Queen's reign – and we wanted to enable people across the country to plant trees and create woodland.

We did that in a number of ways. So, we had this aspiration to create sixty Diamond Woods each of 60-acres in size, which is a big, really big commitment! And we also encourage people to create Jubilee Woods which were much smaller copses of trees in community spaces. And we distributed trees to schools and communities all across the country. Actually, it was hugely successful so the wood we are here at today is the Woodland Trust's flagship Diamond Wood. And then we had landowners and organisations and local authorities who also wanted to be involved.

We needed to create 60-acre woods, we didn't know if we'd get to sixty actually inaudible we did get to sixty, we surpassed that, we had seventy-five woods at that scale created!

Adam: So, seventy-five 60-acre wood

Kerrie: Plus woods yeah, amazing, so, it's the first sixty of the Diamond Woods and then we have fifteen woods that we call the Princess Woods.

Adam: Amazing, and so this was to commemorate that reign, and this is a lovely theme though! You can wander through the years of the Queen's reign. But the royal connection to woods is long and deep, isn't it?

Kerrie: It is yeah. So, we were really fortunate that Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal was patron of that project. But there's a long and well-established connection between the royal family and tree planting, and as part of the project that we did we wanted to map all the woods that were created, and the trees that were planted. So, we copied...

Adam: So, for the, for the queen?

Kerrie: For the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. So actually, we took inspiration and sort of copied the Royal Record that had been done previously to mark a coronation. So, we actually have physically created and produced, published a Royal Record which is a huge red tome and that charts where all those trees are. And this is something that had already been done before the Queen’s father. It’s actually very heavy and so we have a copy at our office in Grantham, there is a copy in the British Library, and we gave a copy both to the Princess Royal and to the Queen. 

Adam: There are lots of royal connections to trees and tree planting even beyond Queen Elizabeth. So, tell me a bit about that.

Kerrie: That's right, yes. So, in the 1660s Charles II commissioned several avenues of sweet chestnut and elm in Greenwich Park and in 1651 he hid from pursuers inside an ancient oak during the English Civil War. and I think that's one of the reasons actually that you see so many pubs called the Royal Oak.

Adam: Right okay because he hid in one?

Kerrie: He hid in one yeah.

Adam: Now you came... when did you see the hole in the ground? This was an open cast mine?

Kerrie: Yes.

Adam: You saw that?

Kerrie: Yes, before any trees were here. So, I can't believe it's been several years since I've been here today, and it is now it's a wood!

Adam: Yeah, there is no sign of that is there?

Kerrie: No absolutely not, a complete transformation.

Adam: It is amazing, isn't it? How quickly really that the natural world can recover. I mean, it needs a bit of help obviously and certainly in this circumstance. But no sign of what must have been really quite horrific bit of landscaping.

Kerrie: Yeah. I think given how stark it felt at the beginning and when we first saw all trees grow in the ground here. It is genuinely remarkable for the transformation in a ten-year period of time! You can hear the birds, the trees are overhead, you know, we've seen butterflies, caterpillars... It really feels like nature has reclaimed this space it's really really exciting

Adam: And when you start, I mean, look it's already done! It’s a success! It looks fantastic, but when you started was this always a ‘this is gonna work’ or at that stage did you think ‘this looks horrible, this might be a disaster, no one might come, no one might get on board with this project’?

Kerrie: Well. I think we all had the vision, we all had hope. There are colleagues of mine that have been working at the Trust for longer than me who knew how this would look. I just didn't know that. This is one of the first projects I worked on so, to see it within ten years, the change that's the thing that I find you know really amazing! I thought I would have to wait much longer, and I'd be coming back with grandchildren to say look at this, but actually, here we are within a decade and it is transformed.

Adam: Brilliant! Alright, well let's move on, let's find David again.

Kerrie: Well, David on a previous visit has actually shown the Princess Royal around this wood. So, in terms of royal connections David has been a royal tour guide.

Adam: Okay, so we have a living royal connection here?

Kerrie: We do.

Adam: Look here’s a little bench, I might just sit here for a while. Brilliant, ah there’s a dedication, what does it say? 'In honour of Sally Whittaker who believed in the beauty of wildlife and protecting it'. I have to say I always do like stopping at a bench and reading those dedications.

Brief pause

So, David, I'm not the only super important person you’ve taken around this woodland, am I?

David: You're not the only super important person maybe, you are charming Adam!

Adam: Ahhh thank you that's very sweet, very sweet laughs come on tell me about the even more important people you've taken around!

David: So, yeah well, the most important person I guess would be Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, alongside Darren [Moorcroft] the CEO of the Woodland Trust. So, I was pretty nervous that morning, to be honest. The CEO, I’d never met him before and obviously a member of the royal family! But yeah no, I remember being nervous at the beginning, and then by the end of the day when I finally said goodbye to Princess Anne I was longing to spend a bit more time with her. She is incredibly charming, yes.

Adam: Yeah. So, we come to a waymark, which? It’s left, is it?

David: Follow the blue and white arrows.

Adam: Right so, if there are... there two different paths? Does blue and white mean anything or?

David: Yeah. So, there’s three waymarked trails around the site and we just happen to be happening on a little bit that's on two of those. So, there's the woodland walk which is the longest walk around the whole of the wood, and then there's the Royal Groves Walk. And then there's the lake walk as well

Adam: Right so, explain a bit about where we're heading off to. You're taking me into the centre of the woods, it feels like?

David: Yeah. So, we're continuing along the groves and eventually, we will get to a broad open vista, and you will be able to see most of the features of the site.

Adam: So, we are already walking out to what looks like a less wooded area.

David: Yes, we're kind of skirting the western edge of the site now and then...

Adam: It's a big site, isn't it? how long will it take to walk over the whole thing do you think? How long are these paths?

David: Like a good tour of every feature of the site here's looking at half a day really, probably, and that's with a bit of pace on.

Adam: I’ve only got short legs laugh so I’d add a few hours. So, there's another one of these posts. Shall we just have a look? 1985 were through to, anyway so...

David: Green woodpecker there, did you hear?

Adam: Oh no wow! I missed out, I've been looking out for posts, I missed the green woodpecker. So, we're just coming out of a rather wooded area into – it suddenly opens up very dramatically – and look at that it's a very different view! So I can see a lovely wildflower meadow almost and then at the bottom a huge lake! A huge lake. So, this is where the old open cast mining just sunk down a bit and has since got naturally filled?

David: Yeah. So, what you're looking at now is the epicentre of the open cast coal mine and obviously the wider landscape around it. So, yeah that's our lake and the end of the groves walk. So, you can just see the final three or four grove posts just heading off down the hill. And then this was an open area left to retain the view and then on the other side of the lake we've got a 5-hectare exclusion zone so there's no paths in that area. Just, no paths in the area, just to allow nature to completely have five hectares for resting birds et cetera.

Adam: Let's go down because I think...

David: We've got something else to show you.

Adam: Sorry go on, rushing ahead, what is it?

David: So, we got this piece of land sculpture that was created by an artist called Rosie Levitan and there are calls every now and again. We get somebody asking if we can put some kind of panel up to explain what it's all about, but the artist herself expressly asked that not to happen. So, I think she is more inclined to allow you to kind of figure it out for yourself or come to your own conclusions as to what it's all about. So, it was created with money from the Arts Council at the inception of the site. So, no money that could have gone into conservation went into creating this piece of art. But yeah, I'll leave you to...

Adam: Sorry, this is it? This is it?

David: This is it; I'll leave you to come to your own conclusions.

Adam: So, when you said a piece of art, I thought you meant like a large statue of something out of wood, but actually, this is a sort of an earth tiered... almost like amphitheatre going downwards counts I think 5 tiers there.

David: It's in a spiral so you can walk around the outside which takes a lot longer than you think!

Adam: Laughs Yeah right I think I might take the direct route down, but to be honest, it seems like a brilliant place to put on a play!

David: Yes! That's my thoughts as well, yeah I'd love to get a play here.

Adam: Yeah! Have you ever gone down then done a soliloquy?

David: Errr not, well, do you want me to?

Adam: Yes, if you if you've got a piece ready laughing

David: Unfortunately, I haven't. I mean I could maybe do a jaunty jig or something like that?

Adam: Yes, well look, we’re recording.

David: Yes, well, no let's not!

Adam: That’s a shame laughing I think you probably come down when there are not many people around. So, if you ever do see a man in Woodland Trust clothing doing a jaunty jig at the bottom of this amphitheatre-like piece of art you know who it is and that he just wouldn't do it for us laughter very nice, very nice.

Adam: So, you're gonna take me down to the lake now?

David: Yeah, take you down to the lake.

Adam: And it's there that we are going to meet one of your volunteers, is that right?

David: That is right yep, a chap called Gerald. So, he's been volunteering with us on the site since the site was created and in various different roles

Adam: And I’ve just gotta say it is beautiful walking down here because there are just huge numbers of buttercups aren’t there?

David: Yes, it is stunning, isn’t it?

Adam: It is stunning, it’s like a sort of it's like a painting! It’s like a painting, brilliant!

David: This is our pond dipping platform.

Adam: There’s a cuckoo

Bird song

Adam: That’s very good, so Gerald, sorry, we’re distracting you. I can see you distracted by some swans coming over with their little babies. They're coming over to investigate you think?

Gerald: I think they are yes! It's good to see it, I, they must be relatively young because a few weeks ago they were they weren't about so it's...

Adam: Right. We’ll let these swans investigate us as I chat to you so tell me. I'm told you do tonnes on this site. What was the local community’s feeling when the trust took over this site and sort of explained what it wanted to do?

Gerald: Generally, really good because you can imagine if you've got an open cast colliery on your doorstep a wood is a big improvement!

Adam: Well, that’s what I was going to say, because sometimes there is, sort of you know, some resistance or sort of misunderstanding about what is trying to happen. But here you go ‘surely this is going to be better for everybody’?

Gerald: Yeah, so I think, overall, the mood was very good. There will be people who say yes but why don't you do this because this is better? We had some debates about whether we could put in some fruit trees, for example, and because we're in a sort of prime growing area in Leicestershire here. And there were debates about whether that was acceptable, whether they were native trees or not. But it was all good healthy discussion and it's interesting to see how the trees have grown and they have particularly grown well on this area here which was the open-cast. When you think – this all was disturbed ground that was put back – the trees have grown probably better here than they have in parts of what was the agricultural land.

Adam: I have to stop because the swans have properly come up to us now. There they are! How involved do you get now, now it's well established what do you actually end doing? Do you come down here most weeks or?

Gerald: It's a couple of times a month at least now. During the pandemic, it was sort of very limited of course, and well before that time, I used to do a monthly walk which was really...

Adam: This is your guided monthly walk?

Gerald: Yes guided, with a series of friends and colleagues.

Adam: Do you have a favourite part of the wood?

Gerald: Actually, probably near the bird hide just along from there.

Adam: Why?

Gerald: I don't know really. It's gotta mix, you got a mix with the water, you got the mix of the trees, a bit of the open meadowland here, and yes, the bird hide does add a bit of character to the place. I think we're lucky to have that there.

Adam: I think David's waiting for me there. Shall we go over and have a chat with him?

We’ve paused for a moment because we’re just passing a black Poplar and a little plaque next to it saying it was planted by BBC Breakfast on 1 June 2012 in celebration of Her Majesty the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

Gerald: Yes, we have the two black poplars here.

Adam: There's another one here. Was that planted by ITV for balance? Laughter

Gerald: Oh no much more prestigious.

Adam: Oh sorry, yes it was planted by Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal who is patron of the Jubilee Wood Project on the 1 of June 2012. And doing very nicely!

Gerald: Yes, they are indeed! They've both grown quite a bit in the last year, I think.

Adam: Very nice! So, what's the way to the bird hide? Is it round here?

Gerald: Just go up to post on turn left. It's at the moment, hidden by a willow screen. It's a piece of willow art, although it's not particularly obvious

Adam: You can see they’ve been bent over at the bottom haven’t they to form a sort of willow fence.

Gerald: If you were to look down on it from a drone it will be an outline of a skylark. It's a little bit overgrown and that's on our task list for next winter to prune that and try and weave in the lower bit. So, it's going to task our skills! Laughter

Adam: We’re going into the bird hunt now.

We’re in the bird hide. David, ironically having seen lots of birds the moment I get in here actually I can’t – oh I think there is one over there – but do people, is this a good actual spot to be watching birds from?

David: Yeah, yeah because it gives you that cover so the birds don't necessarily know you’re here. It is quite a light bird hide though but it was created in conjunction with the Leicestershire Wildlife Trust, so they must have built a few bird hides, but yes.

Adam: To be honest it's lovely weather today. But if it was raining a little bit this would be a fantastic place just to sit down for a while, wouldn’t it?

David: Yes, it would yeah. Just get out of the rain, I’ve done that a couple of times!

Adam: Right, fantastic, alright well where are we going to next?

David: So, there's just one last thing I would like to show you onsite which is just a short walk back up the hill.

Adam: Okay, what is that?

David: It is called the photographic plinth and so it's basically some encouragement for people to keep on visiting the site year after year. So, what we've got is we've got a plinth that you put your camera on and then a brick area that you supposedly stand on so you can get exactly the same photograph every year. You can visit the site and you can watch your family grow as the wood grows around you

Adam: What a brilliant idea! What a brilliant idea. Okay, okay so David so there is a plinth.

David: Yes, this is our photographic plinth. What it needs is updating, because obviously when this was made smartphones didn't exist and now you wouldn't really get a smartphone balanced on that!

Adam: Yes, that's true

David: It needs a little block bit putting on so you can rest a phone on it.

Adam: So, it's not only the trees which have changed, it's the technology that it's referring to. I’ll tell you what, I mean, obviously I'm going to have my photo taken aren’t I? Can I give you my, I haven’t got a camera, I do have my smartphone, so I'll go stand... I’ll go stand here, and in a couple of years I'll come back and I’ll have even less hair. Hold on a second – do I look better with my hat off or on?

Pause

Neither. I feel that was an undiplomatic pause I felt.

David: What I was thinking is that I need to see both to answer correctly, that's why I was thinking. So, I'm gonna take it from the correct position.

Click

There you go

Adam: I'm not confident that looked any good from the look on your face. I'm not going to look at it now I'll check it when I'm home.

There is clearly a lot more to it than I've managed to explore today but what a wonderful treat, on a lovely, beautiful Monday, in this very special royal year! To come and celebrate that here! thank you very much David.

David: that's quite alright Adam it's been a pleasure

Footsteps

Adam: Well, that was a great walk and thanks of course to everyone who arranged that. It's a fantastic place to visit especially in this Royal Jubilee year. If you know about these things, you can find it at grid reference SK 390132. The nearest train stations are Burton, Tamworth and Loughborough, although they're all a bit of a car journey, I have gotta say, from each of those stations. But if you're looking for a woodland perhaps nearer to you do have a look at the Woodland Trust website which has a special site to find a wood near you it is woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. I do recommend you do that until next time happy wandering.

Voiceover: Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don’t forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you’re listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. Why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast. Keep it to a maximum of 5 minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special, or send us an email with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk and we look forward to hearing from you.

Lying next to the River Avon just inside the Cotswolds, Avoncliff Wood is no ordinary wood. The site hosts one of the biggest trials in the UK to find biodegradable alternatives to plastic tree guards. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also a living laboratory, revealing how ash dieback will really affect nature. Site manager Joe gives us a special behind the scenes tour to learn more. We also meet volunteer wardens Kay and James, and catch up with TV presenter Alice Beer who lives nearby.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

Voiceover: You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, I've changed trains at Bath Spa for what appears to be a very small train which is taking me to Avoncliffe. Now, in fact, the train conductor has told me the platform is so short when I get there only one door is going to open. He came through asking “Is anybody getting off?” and I'm the only one, the only one.

Well, I have to tell you, the station here is straight out of a 1930s style Agatha Christie film, that's what it screams to me. Beautiful signs, beautiful flowers, the River Avon just almost next door to the station, a great looking pub and down at the end of the platform one single man who I'm assuming is Joe Middleton with the Woodland Trust, site manager here and the guy who's going to show me around.

Joe: So, welcome to Avoncliffe Wood in the Avon Valley just in between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon. We just crossed over the famous Avoncliffe Aqueduct and just followed the River Avon until we hit even Avoncliffe Wood which carpets the side of the valley across this area of the Cotswolds AONB, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, right at the southern end of the Cotswold AONB.

Adam: There's very little woodlands right here, so what's going on in this first field?

Joe: So, we’re just at the edge of our woodland creation. So we bought 20 hectares, about 40 football pitches, of ancient woodland – untouched for generations – and to buffer that, to try and expand carbon storage and fight climate change and the ecological decline we’re seeing we actually bought another 10 hectares, another 20 football pitches, worth of agricultural fields essentially and meadows which were very intensively grazed and we've planted that up with over 5,000 trees to try and get the next generation of trees in here.

Adam: Wow, okay so shall we go through, have a look? Thank you.

Joe: So just next to us as you can hear the birds singing away, there are blackbirds, robins and blackcaps in there. There’s one acre, here, just on the right-hand side, which was actually planted up 25 years ago by a neighbour. So, the very small one acre square now 25 years later is teeming with you know 30-40 foot birch trees, willows, hazels and hawthorns, full of cherry blossom and hawthorn blossom, and birds nesting, tweeting, and insects buzzing all around us! It's quite rare these days!

So hopefully we think everything we planted up here, all 5,000 trees would look like that in 25 years. A proper young woodland.

Adam: And you've clearly, I mean, they're not uniformly planted so there's a big patch in the middle which you’ve got nothing and they seem to be done in clumps, so why have you done it like that?

Joe: Do you want to know what that patch in the middle is? That’s a sledging lane. Right well so we carried out community consultation when we first bought the woodland. We asked all the locals, we said look there’s this really lovely kind of big expanse of fields all around the wood, we want to buy it, we want it to, you know, fight climate change, we want to try and do our bit for wildlife. And they said whatever you do leave us a sledging lane because when it snows here this hill is perfect for tobogganing down.

Adam: laughs you see I thought it was going to be for some really technical reason! You need to do that for a very specific reason, I didn’t realise it was gonna be sledges.

Joe: There are also wide rides, you know, big areas that people can walk through. We’ve created a really good path network in here as well in some areas and natural regeneration so there are areas unplanted and there are areas purely for tobogganing fun in the middle of snowy winters.

Adam: And why not? It’s very important. Now, the thing that we can see in this immediate field is a lot of tree guards and well I'm also standing by a little sign which says biodegradable tree shelter. I always call them tree guards, but this was called tree shelter. Now that is not by coincidence. The tree guards are a huge issue, aren’t they?

Joe: Yeah, I mean with governments pledging to plant millions if not globally billions of trees to fight climate, you know hold onto carbon, stop floods, we have to be able to do it without using oil-based plastics. For the last 35 years people have just, every tree that's gone in you know, not every one, but most trees that’ve gone in have been planted with a giant plastic tree guard which doesn't biodegrade, it litters, it causes microplastics, and people…

Adam: And are they reusable those plastic guards?

Joe: They are to a certain degree, they're not easy to recycle, there are some better recycling schemes now just starting. But actually, probably one in three are reusable. But a lot of places are too far to go and get them, people don't bother they get left and derelict and are expensive to go and collect every single one, especially when you’re planting hundreds of thousands. So the biodegradable alternative is the absolute key. Find something that naturally, you know, biodegrades away back into the soil, doesn't harm anything, it doesn't use oil.

Adam: Right, I'm just going to go up to… So, this is a biodegradable one?

Joe: Exactly.

Adam: It looks sort of yellowish and quite canvas-like but it's very it's very firm, it doesn't feel, I mean that feels a sturdy old thing this.

Joe: Yeah so, we've got 5,000 trees we put in. We are using some old recycled plastic ones, so we've been given a few, but actually we've got 16 different types of biodegradable alternatives to plastic here. So, they range from cardboard, you know, made from paper or mulch to biodegradable plastics, which the jury is out on at the moment, to actually resins and oils from things like cashew nut shells and pine resin.

We’ve got a train coming past us! Train noise

Two and a half years ago, when we planted the 5,000 trees in all these biodegradable guards, we launched something called Big Climate Fightback, a big Woodland Trust campaign to bring people out to help plant trees and do their bit. And actually, we ended up with over 250 people arriving one Saturday – spades in hand – on the trains in all the train stations. And the people in Bath, and Bristol and Bradford-on-Avon must have thought “what on earth is going on?”, with over 250 people arriving with spades on the platforms. And they came in here, they planted trees en masse – school kids, families, local groups.

Everyone came here to try and plant trees and with that we, you know, told people about the problem of plastics and we've basically now got one of the biggest sites in the UK for trialling an alternative to plastic – to try and protect these trees so they get to five, seven years to get to a good height where they’re no longer susceptible to browsing by deer, by rabbits, by voles, which is the main reason the shelters and guards are here to protect them.

Adam: And correct me if I'm wrong but there is a sort of school of thought saying well don't use any guards. I mean it's now sort of established practice that you’ve got to use a guard otherwise the tree won't survive, but there is this sort of vague thought we never used to use guards in the distant past, so why have we suddenly got obsessed with them?

Joe: I mean deer numbers are higher than they've ever been, it's a huge amount of browsing by deer with no natural predators, so it's complicated, that is the simplest answer, but putting up a giant 6-foot fence is probably you know the other solution which is in a lot of cases, depending on size, it can be much more economic, more practical. Very small areas – probably not massive areas, but medium sized – deer fencing is probably the answer, but then you’ve still got rabbits and voles you’ve got to fence out.

So, doing nothing, over-planting, natural regeneration – we've got an area if you look up to the edge of the woodland we've left the buffer zone of about 20-30 metres around lots of this woodland, all around it, with nothing, we’ve just fenced it off and we're just going to allow the woodland to expand – every one of those berries and those nuts and seeds that drops into the ground will hopefully just have a, you know, wild natural generation. Like Knepp with a huge rewilding – that hope of what happens there doesn't happen as easily here but can take a long time. Hopefully that will establish woodland itself, but it may take 50 years. At the moment we've got a climate emergency on us and amongst us, so we have to do something now so planting trees is a very good quick solution.

Adam: A huge issue because if we are planting for ecological reasons what we don't want to do is every tree comes with its own polluting plastic. I mean that’s not the future. So, the answer to that question may well lie in the thousands of experiments you're carrying out in this field we’re standing in.

Joe: Absolutely.

Adam: Right, well I've stopped us walking. We better… I better get my steps in. So, let’s carry on. Where are we heading to now?

Joe: So, we're gonna go and find our two volunteer wardens in a minute.

Adam: So, we’ve got two volunteers hard at work. I can see just up the hill a bit.

Joe: So, this is James and Kay who are both our two volunteer wardens. They’ve been working now replacing broken, rotted, fallen biodegradable tree guards, replacing the trees as they die as well, and these two have been working hard to help keep an eye on them for the last few years for us.

Adam: It's got them hard at work!

Joe: They are incredibly hard at work. Hey guys how you doing?

Kay and James: Alright? Hi! Hello.

Adam: They do have you hard at work! So Kay and James, so first of all before we get to what you’re actually doing, why have you been doing it? What's your interest? Why did you volunteer to do all of this?

Kay: Well, you’ve been a volun… a member of the Woodland Trust for about 25 years.

James: Well, it’s about 35 years now.

Kay: Since this is really on our doorstep, this is a perfect opportunity to get really involved with the Woodland Trust.

Adam: James, I mean, you’ve been a Woodland Trust member for a very long time. And, ah the debate around trees has changed enormously. Hasn’t it?

James: It has, and I am glad that people have suddenly valued trees. I was in the military but, before that, I was out of Kent, out near Canterbury and my uncle was a farmer with orchards and basically from the earliest days I knew about the trees, the names of trees. The pollards at the end of the field as windbreaks, the various wetland trees down in the floodplains around the Romney Marsh area. But I already had a fascination for the massive oaks, the spectacular deciduous trees on the horizon I think made this this countryside look like it does, so British, and so English, with these gorgeous round shapes, compared to a lot of conifers you see in all the European places I’ve been to.

Adam: Okay, talk me through a bit about what you’re actually doing here – I mean, you know, hammer in hand I can see.

Kay: Hammer in hand, we're replacing some of the tubes that haven't stood up to the wind and the rain. We found that circular rather than rectangular and…

Adam: works, circular works…

Kay: circular works, because otherwise if it's square they act as a flag, especially cardboard ones. When they get wet, they just disintegrate – as you can see there's lots of bare sticks around here, so yeah, we're going through and replacing them with circular ones.

Adam: Fantastic, now I know that the local community were very involved with the Trust, sort of when the Trust took over and sort of designed this site. Tell me a bit about what the local community feel.

Kay: That was a great day. We had two schools frog marched in, and yeah, with their teachers and staff and they planted the whole area, which was lovely – they were naming the trees as they were planting them. I know the whole village got involved with planting 5,000 trees over a progressive few weekends and subsequently James and I have been replanting the failures.

Adam: And James I mean very clear how engaged you are with this sort of issue but to tell me about the feelings then of the local community and what they what they felt when Woodland Trust first came here and how involved others are apart from you two.

James: So, I'm very pleased that people are actually accepting, on the whole, that their backyard has been filled with trees and shrubs which are growing up for their children's lifetime.

Kay: We have had some objections to this, but they haven't given their reason why. I assume it's because it's used when we do get snow, which is very rare, it's the sledging field. The Woodland Trust have kindly left a gap for sledging but then they moan that the grass is too long so you can't please everyone all of the time.

Adam: But when it was first thought about, and I think it's really interesting isn’t it, that you say the community are largely behind this, but I think if others are listening to you now where they may be talking about a woodland on their doorstep created by the Woodland Trust or their own sort of organisation – I wonder what people's first reaction, what were their concerns and hesitancies that you heard about that may have been overcome?

Kay: People don't like change do they? And at the moment it's, yeah, it doesn't look picture perfect with the stakes and the guards on, but you've got to envisage what it will look like in 10-15 years’ time. You've only got to look at the hedgerow, which is behind us now, and at this time of year which is beginning of May, it’s absolutely gorgeous. The blossom’s out, the fresh burst of the leaf is so colourful and vibrant, what’s not to like about having a wood on your doorstep? And we were very lucky.

Adam: Okay, well brilliant, well thank you very much. Look I don't want to disturb you anymore but that's brilliant. Thank you very much.

Kay: Thank you!

Adam: So, we're gonna head up now to the ancient woodland. Now this is certainly unique in any of the Woodland Trust sites I’ve been to, because normally the Trust actively encourages people to come in, but this is the only site I've been to where the ancient woodland bit you stop people from coming. Oh, look this is…

Joe: This is our nifty little fenced area which…

Adam: We’re going through the barbed wire so just be careful going…

So, explain to me why you've unusually actually kept the public out of the ancient woodland.

Joe: Ash dieback really is becoming a huge problem across a lot of woodlands I manage. I manage about 30 woods across the West Country and every one of them has large amounts of ash that really grows really well on these sort of limestone soils and in these hills around the Mendips, the Cotswolds.

Gosh there’s a huge Buzzard just soaring over the edge of the woodland there.

So, ash dieback is killing off essentially all our ash trees. Estimates vary at the moment. You know recently it was about 95% and then people said it was around 60%. So, the latest estimate is that about 60% of our ash trees will die over the next 50 years. How fast they die is the worrying thing but when we bought the wood in 2019 ash dieback was blowing across the landscape. It is a fungal disease. It naturally spreads.

It came over from Asia originally in infected stock of nursery trees being planted out. So, no one's been able to plant any ash for the last three years. It's now being reported all the way from the east of Great Britain, all the way to the west, every year, until it’s spread and spread and spread now our mature ash trees – whether they're in a hedgerow, along roadsides and country lanes, whether they're in woodlands – ash trees are essentially dying en masse, and this is killing off everything that lives and breathes on those ash trees.

Adam: And the reason you're keeping the public out is because the trees are dangerous, are they? They might fall?

Joe: Yeah exactly, so where you have a path or road or property you have to maintain, you know, what's reasonably practical safety for people to be able to walk under it. We realise if we were to create a load of paths, allow a load of people into now what is a fantastic ancient woodland, but it has never really had any paths in, it's been undisturbed for generations – over 100 years now – we don't think anyone set foot in it. So, we didn't want to create any paths because we didn't want to fell any trees, so we've kept it shut and all the locals have seemed to have bought into that and are really pleased this is just a woodland for wildlife. They're happy enough to walk around the fields where we've created woodland.

Adam: And is it also something of a laboratory to see what happens to ash dieback? If you really don't step in and try and do anything?

Joe: Exactly yeah, so, in so many woodlands across Britain because of the large amount of public footpaths, people are having to fell for health and safety reasons, so there's not very many examples where if no one goes in and nothing happens, what happens to that wildlife? Does it also dramatic- dramatically decline, with the trees losing? Or are there some winners? So, are there some decay species? Some fungi species? Some insects, beetles that love decay rotting wood that increase? So we don't really know. So, this site we've turned into a living laboratory, this is a unique case of where we are monitoring the species within the wood, how they react to ash dieback over time.

Adam: We're now going into the bit of ancient woodland which the public are locked out of and so we have got this big “keep out, closed due to ash dieback” (sign).

Joe: You have exclusive access!

Adam: Brilliant, now I gotta say, I mean I've got to take a photo of this because this is a sea of amazing plants. I'm really, I want to be careful where I tread, I don’t want to disturb anything. Because I'm completely ignorant, what are these plants?

Joe: Can you smell it?

Adam: Yeah sure, it’s extraordinary!

Joe: This is wild garlic.

Adam: Is that what it is?

Joe: Ramsons are all in flower at the moment and now we can see for literally, well, hundreds of metres is the white snowy tops of these wild garlic flowers that are just coming up across the thick green leaves and when there's no path in sight you have to be careful where you tread. So, luckily wild garlic’s quite prolific, so we’ll tread carefully, but an undisturbed wood looks like this. It's like a sea, or a carpet of sort of snow.

Adam: That is extraordinary, isn't it? Yes it is a sea of snow and that's the advantage of actually having undisturbed places. Is that it, I mean, yeah sea is exactly what it looks like. These sort of white foaming tops to the rolling green waves of vegetation. Quite amazing.

Joe: All you can make out are the occasional tracks of foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels, that have gone through it, maybe the odd deer as well. But insects seem to be declining catastrophically. The ideal analogy is, you know, people used to drive around even in the 80s and you get windscreens splattered with bugs and insects. It just doesn't happen anymore and that massive decline of insects, it’s unknown the reason, it probably doesn't help with, you know, when people are using lots of pesticide sprays across the countryside, along with climate change, but as all those insects decline so do our birds that feed on them, so are our bat species – so they're not fat enough to basically get through the hibernation and then when they come out of hibernation and the young are born there are just not enough insects so they don't make it through the summer essentially, and they don't have another generation that makes it. So, yeah, bat species are declining at the moment, so that's one of the first things we've noticed, and well ash are declining en masse. There were a lot of these species of ash that we’re monitoring that are all dying en masse.

Adam: I mean so that, I mean, …you're telling me all these terrible things

Joe: Yes, I know.

Adam: But I mean that's important it's still amazing landscape still isn't it?

Joe: Absolutely.

Adam: And that's always been true with woodlands. That decay brings its own new life and decaying trees are very important parts the of the ecosystem, but even given all of those challenges that you talk about are there any, are there any high points, any reasons for optimism?

Joe: Well, wild garlic’s obviously doing really well in this particular wood! But there will be some species that do, really, there will be some species of butterfly that you know do really successfully with the increased amount of light. But one of the best success stories, the best things you can do to feel positive about it is to go back out into those fields, plant the trees, the next generation, so that if some of these woodlands do suffer for whatever reason then we've got far more woodland habitat.

We need to increase our woodland cover from about 13% to 20% fast and then if we get 20% – we've got the shrubs, we've got the tree species, got the rewilding areas – to be able to provide those homes for the species that aren't doing so well. That's the key I think is to plant the next generation, get there quickly.

Our woodlands have a fantastic history and have been managed over time. This is just the next phase in the management to basically keep an eye and ensure our guardianship secures for that next generation in the next 50-100 years.

Adam: Well I'm going to leave Joe to smelling his wild garlic, because TV presenter and journalist Alice Beer, who I used to work with, I know lives not that far from this woodland. Now I know she's out and about today so I'm going to call her on her mobile to discuss what the countryside around here means to her and her family. Okay, so just Alice first of all we should explain a bit about our history, so everybody…

Alice: Oh must we tell everybody? Do you think we should?

Adam: I think we should share a little bit. I used to open letters on Watchdog which was a massive massive programme at the time and I can't, do you remember how many people watched it? I can't

Alice: Well I don't know I'd come to watchdog from That's Life and That's Life, which was before you were born Adam I’m sure, had 15 million viewers in its heyday and I think Watchdog was around 7 million viewers, which now is completely unheard of, but then you know it was just 7 million people watching it and more importantly 7 million people putting pen to paper. No emails, pen to paper, and thank God Adam Shaw was in the post room!

Adam: Yes I was opening the 7 million letters with one or two other people and Alice was much more senior, so we would come to pass those stories onto Alice and of course, you are now, what’s your official title?

Alice: I suppose I'm actually probably daytime television presenter but I'm far too much of a snob to say that! I kind of dip in and out of various things trying to still help the little guy or pass on information.

Adam: You have a regular spot on a very big programme, This Morning?

Alice: Well, This Morning, yes, it’s every day, it's now two and a half hours, they keep extending it! I am waiting for it to bump up against the Six O'Clock News soon! But This Morning it was, “can you do a piece on brisk walking and the health benefits”, as a result of some survey that came out, so here I am for the second time today brisk walking and broadcasting at the same time which is fantastic!

Adam: Very good! Don’t trip over! You’ve got a couple of dogs with you haven't you as well?

Alice: I have, I’ve got Stanley who's my five-year-old schnoodle and his girlfriend Tilly and there are times when they become quite amorous in the long grass but I'm going to try and keep it clean for your sake!

Adam: I knew you when we used to work in Shepherd’s Bush in London, but you are now a country girl aren't you?

Alice: Yeah, wellies welded to my feet! I grew up in suburbia and in North London suburbia and the countryside wasn't really important to me, but my parents took me out, took me and my sister out walking quite a lot. There was always “shall we do the walk through the woods”, “should we do the walk through the bluebell woods” which is slightly longer or “should we go up and round” which involved the hill. So, there was always a consciousness of walking in the countryside as a pleasant thing to do, but as we've got older, the countryside has become more important to me and we have been doing that thing, my partner and I have been doing that thing where we're trying to move out of London and we've settled on this beautiful village, beautiful functional village not far from Malmesbury in Wiltshire, which is where I am now, walking alongside the River Avon. So not too far from Avoncliff and the same body of water sort of flowing past me which is rather nice.

Adam: How lovely. I know, I've seen you on This Morning as you’re talking about wellbeing, and in terms of actually, with your consumer journalist hat on talking about the gadgets you could buy to help with wellbeing and having lights I think that show, sort of, natural light. I mean, how important do you feel it's been for you and your family during these rather difficult times to have access to nature and the outside?

Alice: It’s been everything to me. Everything. I've got teenage girls in fact it’s their birthday today, their 19th birthday today, so for them probably it spells isolation for them because they didn't grow up in the countryside, or this this particular part of the countryside, so you know this means being away from their friends, but for myself and my husband it's been, it's been really important. For me to leave the house and walk in space because in London everything has felt very close and very claustrophobic and I’m mentally not good at that at all! So, I'm incredibly lucky to be able to breathe and give myself sort of mental and physical space away from other people. I was able to work from here, so I did sixty live broadcasts from, in effect, my back garden during lockdown.

Adam: It’s really interesting that you talk about your girls sort of feeling a sense of isolation because they came from the city and now are in a very rural area. I often find that it's a curious thing to get one's head round because really the nature debate about sustainability and trying to be better for the world is often very strongly led by young people.

Alice: Oh it's theirs, it's completely their campaign! But I'm not sure that they associate it with, I mean, I feel like I'm treading on dangerous territory speaking, you know, putting words into their mouths because they're both very eloquent, quite passionate girls. I feel that I'm not sure that they would stand out in a field and say “we must protect this”. Probably coming from the city, they feel more that they see stuff, they see things going into bins, they see landfill, smoke, pollution. So, they see the big preservation of our world from a city perspective, probably more than standing in a field and thinking “oh this must never have, you know, thousands of houses built on it”, which is what probably makes me panic as much as anything.

Adam: Do you get a sense of a change in people's attitudes in the way they behave, I mean, I think people talk about the need for ecological sustainability. I see amongst my friends and family, I have to also be careful about what I’m saying, I see less actually willingness to change personal behaviour than a willingness to say it's important, but they don't do an awful lot. Do you see that real difference?

Alice: I'm a huge hypocrite, but I am now suddenly, it was probably about six months ago I was putting something in the bin, and it sounds like a strange Greta Thunberg epiphany, but it slightly was. I was putting some plastic in the bin, and I was trying to clear out a room and I was thinking this is going nowhere! This can't be recycled. This has to go underneath the ground, and this is not going to break down. I had a sort of panic about the fact that well if I was doing this and everyone was doing this and though I sort of have had that epiphany and I am changing my behaviour, and nothing particular triggered that, apart from me clearing out a bedroom and realising I had too much stuff. You know, which is odd, but you know, in terms of the big picture in the world I think it's very hard to make individuals feel responsible when we see big companies not taking responsibility. It’s that sort of, well what difference is little me gonna make? And I’ve sort of had that, well I'm going to make a difference, so I will. I've had that moment and I think we have to all have that moment and I'm just about to fall into the River Avon, which could be interesting! I'm trying to encourage the dogs to have a drink. There you go guys, come on, look Tilly have a drink! Yeah well they’re sort of having a drink, but I'm the one that's most likely to go in here.

Adam: Well look, Alice, I feel split because I quite like the sound effect of you going in to end this, it’d be a great end wouldn’t it! But on the other hand not a great way of re meeting after all these years. Look I will let you get on with your walk but thank you very much, thanks a lot.

Alice: Thank you, thank you.

Adam: Well, let's leave Alice Beer there and indeed all our friends at Avoncliff Woods. I do hope you enjoyed that and if you want to find a wood near you, you can go to the Woodland Trust website, woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood and you can find a wood that's local to you. So that’s woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. I do recommend you do that. Until next time happy wandering!

Voiceover: Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don’t forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you’re listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. Why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast. Keep it to a maximum of 5 minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special, or send us an email with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk and we look forward to hearing from you.

On a delightful spring morning at Marden Park, just inside the M25 in East Surrey, we enjoy a walk with expert site manager Nick. He fills us in on how nature and people are benefiting from this special place and explains some of the challenges here too, including dealing with the effects of ash dieback and climate change.

Wildlife is thriving here thanks to the mix of woodland both young and old, veteran trees, rare chalk grassland and more. We see butterflies and signs of badgers during our visit, and volunteer Celia tells us all about efforts to help the endangered dormouse as part of the important National Dormouse Monitoring Programme.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

We join Elaine Paige, award winning actress, singer, producer and radio presenter, as she plants trees at London's Hainault Forest. Known as the First Lady of Musical Theatre with roles in Evita, Cats and many more, Elaine chats with us about nature, the theatre and her hopes for the future.

She gives us insight into her years on stage, from the origins of her love of music to her rise to stardom in Evita in 1978, a role that changed her life forever. We also talk about why nature is important to her and her future plans, including a return to singing and planting more trees!

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk