Woodland Walks - The Woodland Trust Podcast

Did you know American music legend Nile Rodgers is helping the Trust plant and protect woodland in Northern Ireland? Alongside generous donations to Faughan Valley Woodlands from the We Are Family Foundation (WAFF), Nile has got stuck in with planting on site. Nile and the foundation he co-founded with his partner, Nancy Hunt, are working with us to reconnect fragmented native woods in a region where less than 1% of ancient woodland remains. We caught up with the multiple Grammy Award winner on his latest visit to find out why. We also hear from David Saddington, trustee of both WAFF and the Trust, on why empowering young people to take direct action is key to this work, and we chat to some of those volunteering at this special event. Please note this episode contains references to drugs. 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. Nile: But it just made me feel so good. It was so real, it was almost like a drug. So my parents were doing heroin, I was doing music *laughs*. Nile: So I always thought that an artist was the guy trying to be the smartest person in the room, that everybody said, 'well, I wish I could play like him, I wish I could do that'. No, it was the person who touched people's hearts. Nile: We actually had them locked out the studio because we still hadn't finished the lyrics to We Are Family. Nile: Trees do, all plants, but trees, you know, especially, do so much for life. Let's not just talk about the overall environment, life, all life forms that exist. Adam: For 40 years, if you've been on a dance floor, you'll have been dancing to the music of one of our guests today. He co-founded Chic, produced and collaborated with David Bowie, Madonna, Richard Jackson, and well, to be honest, too many others to mention. But to give you an idea of the sort of musical success he's had, I can say that he has produced and performed on records which have sold more than 750 million albums and 100 million singles. Born to teenage parents in an environment where drug use was very much part of his every day, he has come from that background with an attitude to life which is as upbeat and as positive as his music. And together with his partner, Nancy Hunt, they have established the We Are Family Foundation, focused on empowering young people around the world. Together, they're in Northern Ireland, in Derry, to support and protect and indeed restore woodland in this country, and indeed Nile is on the Woodland Walks sofa and joined by one of the trustees of the We Are Family Foundation and indeed the Woodland Trust, David. So we'll come to David in a moment. Why don't we start now where it all started with the music? Reading about you and listening to stuff you've done, my impression is you're the most positive person I've read about and that surprises me because of the disjointed background you grew up in. So two questions. Do you think that's a fair description and if so, why? Nile: So the... the interesting thing about my childhood was that though my parents were heroin addicts, they were extremely loving and they believed in me so much so that, believe it or not, I was never, ever told what to do. They knew that I instinctively would figure it out. Or I was just one of those nerdy, nice kids that they knew would never get into trouble. I mean, I have never stolen anything. I've never, I bullied one kid once and the reason why is because everybody bullied me because I was a nerd. And when I bullied this kid, he started crying and I started crying. He's probably forgotten that incident. I will never forget it. It'll bother me my entire life. I could not believe that I did that. So my childhood was actually on one level very happy, but at the exact same time, and I don't know how these two situations could have coexisted, except only now forensically, but it was super happy, but then I actually called my childhood a fear-based childhood. I was afraid of things, so I did things to make me unafraid or happy. And music was that thing. But it just made me feel so good. It was so real. It was almost like a drug. So my parents were doing heroin. I was doing music *laughs*. Adam: I mean, it's weird you describe yourself as a nerd. You're the least nerdy-looking nerd I've ever come across, but fair enough. Nile: Oh God, test me. Adam: Oh really, okay, we'll do a nerd off *both laugh*. Fair, fair enough. But that positivity, I mean, you talk about being nice, but what I think is striking about your music, and perhaps problematic for some of it, is that it's relentlessly positive. And I think sometimes it's seen as sort of very surface level because of that and yet you talk about the deeper meaning behind the music, which I think some fans of yours perhaps don't see, or that's not what they're getting from it. Nile: But that's okay, though. Adam: That's fine. Nile: It's okay. Yeah, you're so correct. I mean, I'll try and quickly just tell you this story. So when I said I was a nerd, believe me, I studied music on a level that was so intense, that was ridiculous. So I thought it was my job to prove to my tutors and various teachers how smart I was, how well I learned the rules and the discipline of music. I wrote symphonic music when I was a child, I wasn't even 10 years old yet. And I remember I was going to one of my tutors. I was around 22 years old and I was a very serious jazz student. And I went into him one day with a very sourpuss attitude and look, and that was not me. He just was like, no, you're always so happy and you're always so upbeat. What's wrong with you today? And I said, well, look at this ******** pop music that I have to play tonight. Now, maybe I thought it was sort of ******** but maybe I was just trying to score brownie points with him because I always thought being a great musician was being the smartest guy or the greatest virtuoso in the room. So what happened was my teacher, I showed him the list of songs that I was playing that night. And I said, look at what I have to start my set with. This song by The Archies called Sugar, Sugar. He said, yeah, but now what's wrong? Why are you so sad? And I said, because I got to play Sugar, Sugar. You know, I want to play straight ahead jazz. He was like, that's okay that you want to play straight ahead jazz, that's what I love. But why is it bothering you to play Sugar, Sugar? And I said, because it goes, *sings* Honey, do, do, do, do, do, do, oh sugar, sugar, do, do, do, do, do, do, you are my candy girl, and you got me wanting you. And he said, Nile, that's a great composition. I went, you call Sugar, Sugar a great composition? He said, absolutely. He said, what do you think about it? He says, and I went, well, it sucks. It's some ******** bubblegum pop music. And he went, now, do you know that Sugar Sugar's been number one for about three weeks? And I said, yeah, but what does that got to do with anything? And he went, so those millions of people around the world, they're wrong, but you, Nile Rodgers, are right? And all of a sudden I felt, uh-oh, *laughs* something weird's getting ready to happen. So he held me behind my head and he pulled my face close to him and he said, Nile, let me explain something to you. Every record in the top 20 is a great composition. And so remember, we're going back now 50 years. I'm 73 years old, so we're going back a long time. And I say, every record in the top 20 is a great composition? He says, yes. I said, why would you say something so absurd? He says, Nile, because it speaks to the souls of a million strangers. And I literally started crying at that moment because in one spark, in a nanosecond, he explained to me what an artist was. So I always thought that an artist was the guy trying to be the smartest person in the room, that everybody said, well, I wish I could play like him. I wish I could do that. No, it was the person who touched people's hearts. It was the person who made people feel something, be it happiness, be it sadness or whatever. But a lot of my friends who are virtuosos, we just would go, wow, he can play his *** off. That was the thing. We didn't feel anything necessarily. Sometimes we did, but I was determined to try and make people feel something every time. And to me, I wanted people to feel happy because I wanted to feel happy. Why do I want to write sad music? Adam: So that phrase, speaking to the souls of a million strangers, it's clearly an iconic thing about your music. The other striking thing, I think, which you've talked about, is about life, not just your music, but I think obviously connected, is not about surviving the storm, but learning how to dance in the rain. Is that one of the tenets of your approach to music and life? Are they the same thing? Nile: That's exactly it. That's why people wonder why I do so much music, and it's because I believe that I could always, I honestly, and this is not an egotistical statement, I always believe that I can add something to the song. I believe that I can make it better, even if it's just a little better, but you can hear it. I mean, five minutes before I came down here, I asked an artist that I sent a piece of music to, I said, you never wrote me back. How do you feel about the guitar streams that I sent you? And Kygo just wrote me, he said, he just literally just wrote me, where the hell is it? I went, cool. He went, oh, yes sir, sounding really cool *laughs*. Minutes ago. Adam: Okay. So look, we need to talk more about that, but I want, you're here not for the music, but for the work of your, and Nancy, your partner's, foundation. And David Saddington, sitting next to you, is a trustee of that foundation. You also happen to be a trustee of the Woodland Trust as well. So the purpose of the We Are Family Foundation is what? David: I mean, the We Are Family Foundation, Nile and Nancy started 20, 25 years ago now, which is insane *both laugh*. And Nile, I mean, you'll tell it better than me in terms of sort of your origin story, which came from, you know, a horrendous event of 9/11. And Nile and Nancy wanted to do something positive for the world, to heal the world. And thankfully, you know, when they sort of asked that question around how do we sort of have more peace in the world, how do we have more harmony, young people came out as the answer and actually finding that hope, finding that positivity, finding those solutions. So the foundation really is built upon curating, nurturing and growing this talent and giving these young people visibility. Adam: And the work that the We Are Family Foundation is starting to do in Northern Ireland, we were today at a planting with Nile and Nancy and you. What is the project here? David: Yeah, my God, like, you know, I work on climate change every day. It's really sort of hard and difficult, but actually by doing something very local with the Woodland Trust, you make such a tremendous difference, not only just about place, but the communities which you bring along. So this partnership just made a lot of sense. And then when we started talking after that visit around sort of why it made sense to support from the foundation, Northern Ireland came out really as a winner. And the beautiful site we visited earlier in the Faughan Valley is so special because, in a sad way really, because so little of the ancient woodland is left in Northern Ireland, less than 1%. And the vision of the Woodland Trust in Northern Ireland to preserve those tiny fragments of ancient woodland, but protect them by restoring the land around it, letting them expand, is so special. And particularly given that site is, what, I mean, like 10 minutes away from Derry? That's so cool. It is right on the doorstep of so many people to restore such a precious habitat, but make sure that people can actually enjoy it and be part of that as well. Amazing. Adam: A little before Nile and I sat down to speak, we both visited Faughan Valley Woodlands with a group of young people who were there to help plant some trees. Now, this is an important area. Since 2000, the Woodland Trust has brought small clusters of native woodlands, including Brackfield, Oaks, Red Brae, Burntollet, Killaloo and Auter, all fragmented along the Faughan Valley, which is a site of special scientific interests. And it's been a vision of the Woodland Trust Northern Ireland for well over a decade, really, to try and connect these fragments for both people and nature. And so when I met the younger people who are busy planting trees, I asked them why they felt what they were doing was important. Speaker 1: So usually it's around every Sunday morning. We go around and it's just odd jobs, like it's never the same thing every week. It's usually planting trees, but recently we've been building fences to keep sheep out and removing tree guards. Adam: And why are you interested in that instead of watching TV or playing Xbox or whatever? Speaker 1: Well, I've always kind of liked outdoorsy stuff in nature and usually I wouldn't really do much on a Sunday. So it's just better to get out rather than do nothing on a Sunday morning so. Adam: And you're about to plant a tree. Speaker 1: Yeah. Adam: Do we know what type of tree that is? Speaker 1: I think it's oak. Adam: Oh, there we are see, I don't know, but you know, go on plant away. Speaker 2: I'm Sophie McGee. Adam: And what are you doing, Sophie? Speaker 2: Well, we're planting trees today for the 30th anniversary. It's just more interesting because we're actually doing something that's worthwhile for the environment and for ourselves. Adam: And do you feel you're making a difference? Speaker 2: Yes, every tree will help. No matter if it's a wee tiny stick or a big massive one. Speaker 3: Well my name is Evie, I'm 13 years old and I've always been interested in nature and plants and animals and stuff and then my auntie decided, or she showed me the Woodland Trust young volunteers so I thought that sounds right up my street. So I joined, I've only been here for a few weeks and so far I've really enjoyed it. We've been trimming down, we've been trimming away trees that'll grow back to let light into the forest floor. We've been looking at different kinds of moths and caterpillars and we've been for walks and here we are planting trees and meeting celebrities! Speaker 4: My name's Milo and you know we're with the Woodland Trust, you know, planting trees and stuff because, well, you know, trees are important and they support a lot of species and insects and wildlife and it's great for the water quality and soil erosion in general. And in my opinion personally, I think biodiversity is really important, especially in, the UK and Northern Ireland in general. It's just seem to be really sort of nature depleted and, you know, I kind of want to change that. I think it doesn't seem fair, you know? Adam: Nile, I think the phrase we've already used many times is We Are Family, the name of one of your most successful songs, but obviously the name of your foundation. And we've talked about your family. That's an obvious theme, family. I'm struck by that because of a disjointed background, even though loving and literarily full. Your family were artists and you had a full and rich literary life. The connection to family, clearly a theme for you. Why? Nile: It wasn't my idea. It was other people's ideas. And they talked me into it. I, as an artist, I wrote We Are Family for Sister Sledge and for Sister Sledge alone. I didn't write it for the world. I wrote it for them. And they, it was their job to now take it out into the world, which they did very well. But what happened as a byproduct of the composition was just the love that I put into the song that my partner Bernard Edwards and I put into the song, we were trying to talk about this wonderful family, you won't believe this, that we never met. We never met Sister Sledge until they came in to sing the song. The entire album was already produced. We didn't know any other way to make records except for by ourselves. So we made the record and said, okay, now sing this. And they were like, what? We've never been treated like this. We're like, we don't know any other way to make records. Me and Luther Vandross and Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson, and we go in and we write and produce, and there you go, here's your record. But so the love that we projected onto Sister Sledge was something that we superimposed upon them. We don't know whether they liked each other or not. We just presupposed that they did. And that's what we wrote, this loving, anthemic, wonderful dance song. And Kathy Sledge, at 15 years old, came in and just gave the performance of her life. We actually had them locked out the studio because we still hadn't finished the lyrics to We Are Family *both laugh*. It was the final song that we wrote, right? So we wouldn't let them come in. We're inside trying to be professional. And they're like, why can't we come in and hear what you guys are making as demos? Making as demos? No, we made, it's the record. But anyway, what happened was, as a result of the popularity of the song, this baseball team in America, the Pittsburgh Pirates, adopted it as their theme song. And they're not women, they're men. And we saw these big burly men going, we are family, I got all my sisters with me. And I was like, whoa. And anyway, they won the World Series *laughs*. Adam: But I mean, that's a fascinating insight how you made that song. But what I'm struck by is that you have talked about this deeper hidden meaning, your phrase, right, behind your songs. So that's an obvious question to ask. You talk about family. It's a key song in your career. It hints of the deeper meaning here is about the importance of your family. And your family are unusual. Super talented people, not particularly stable, I hope that's not insulting or anything. But it's sort of, I'd expect you to maybe be more traumatised by that or to have, but no, it's all good. It's all good. Nile: It wasn't, you see, it wasn't traumatic because I developed my own survival mechanism and it was actually good. But I don't think you realise this. I said, everybody told me, oh, you got Grammys, you got this, you're the head of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, you're the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I said, you know what? The thing that I am the most proud of in my life is at seven years old, I set the national truancy record for the United States of America *both laugh*. I cut school 75 days in a row and went to the movies. I learned more at the cinema in 75 days than everybody in my class learned in an entire semester. You could see Fellini, you could see Truffaut, you could see anything. My mom, when she had her second child, suffered from postpartum depression and threatened to murder my brother every day. So after a few weeks, and I can't remember how long it took because I was a child, but after her going to psychiatrist every day, that's how bad it was, they decided that she had to be separated from her children. She was a danger to herself and others. So they sent me off to Los Angeles to live with my maternal grandmother. And my youngest brother, who was just born, was sent to live with his paternal grandparents. And so while I was in Los Angeles, I was treated ah man, boy, talk about bullying. Every place in LA was sort of run by gangs. And I didn't know anything about the gang culture. And I spoke like a New Yorker. And everybody in LA was, you know, street slang. And, you know, and now look at how big hip hop is. You know, that's the way that that everyone spoke. I didn't know half the stuff they were saying. So kids would try and beat me up. They only beat me up once, no, twice, sorry, twice

Have you ever wondered what trees taste like? That's the thought that spurred our guest, Ben Branson, to launch his latest venture, Sylva. We meet in Essex at his woodland, distillery and lab, where he crafts non-alcoholic drinks that capture the natural flavours of trees. Also the founder of Seedlip, the world's first distilled non-alcoholic spirit, Ben has now turned his focus entirely to nature to make Sylva 'a tree company that makes drinks'. Join us to explore the production process, admire a centuries-old oak that could offer a new flavour, and discover Ben's mission to encourage others to love trees as much as he does. We also learn how Ben's ADHD and autism help fuel his curiosity and innovation, and inspired him to launch The Hidden 20%, a charity, podcast and movement finding and sharing the truth about neurodiversity. 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, in today's episode of Woodland Walks, I'm off to see a man who invented the world's first distilled non-alcoholic drink. It was called Seedlip and effectively he created it in his kitchen and took it to 40 countries and in the process, I think it's fair to say, helped change the world of adult drinks and it certainly spurned lots of imitators, which you may well know. He also has a different mission. Really, I think it's fair to say his mission is now at least partly to involve the environment in much of what he does. He has, for instance, won two golds at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show, and last year launched Pollen Projects, which aims to continue to disrupt the drinks industry, in particular though, by harnessing the flavour powers of trees. And that's something I suppose I've really never thought about. Anyway, so I met him at his farm, his home, his laboratory - they're all more or less the same thing - somewhere in Essex. Ben: My name is Ben Branson. I'm the founder of Sylva. Adam: Fantastic. So first of all, we've lots to talk about. Ben: We do. Adam: Because we are sitting in an amazing, is this a laboratory? Ben: Yeah, I guess. Adam: It doesn't feel like a laboratory, it feels something much more designery. It feels like a Porsche should be made here or something. Anyway, looking over an extraordinary landscape, and we're going to go for a walk through that. But first of all, would you tell me a little bit about what, I suppose, what's brought you here and your history and why, why you're doing what you're doing. Ben: So I grew up on a farm and my family have been farming up in Lincolnshire for 320 years now. So that's nine generations and we're still farming. And I guess that meant I enjoyed a childhood largely outside and trees played a big part of that. Animals did, fields, produce, and hard work, I guess, not from me, but from my family. Adam: Right. So did you ever work on the farm? Ben: I did, yeah. And I would spend summers... Adam: So you got your hands dirty? Ben: Yeah, I would spend summers sitting on a tractor or going and sitting with my grandfather on a combine. Adam: Right. And you came to prominence for something completely different. I mean, not sheep or potatoes or anything, but the non-alcoholic drink called Seedlip. So briefly, how on earth did that happen? Ben: Yeah, Seedlip was a, I guess, a series of sort of curious accidents. Adam: I suppose we should pause, just tell, for those who don't know, what on earth we're talking about, what is Seedlip? Ben: So Seedlip was the, or is, the world's first distilled non-alcoholic spirit. Adam: Fine. Ben: So botanicals, distilled. and made into various different blends that you could have with tonic or in a cocktail. Adam: Will you get annoyed or too crude to describe it as a non-alcoholic gin? Ben: Too crude in that it is illegal to describe it as a non-alcoholic gin now *both laugh* Adam: Oh okay, not just too crude! Okay, incorrect. But okay, in my mind, I saw it as a... Ben: Akin to. Adam: Akin to. Ben: In that, in that world of a clear, botanical-driven liquid. Adam: Fine. So we know what it is. Ben: We know what it is. I've never worked for somebody else's drinks business before. I've never worked in manufacturing. Yeah, I learned how to distill ingredients partly through YouTube, partly through a book that was originally published in 1651. I have a 1664 copy of here called The Art of Distillation that details apothecaries' experiments for herbal remedies using distillation. So I, this started with me growing herbs at home and down the rabbit warren of Wikipedia looking at different lists of ingredients. Adam: So why did you want to do that? Ben: Because I'm the kind of guy that has a collection of 4,000 1940s Penguin books. And I'm the kind of guy that learned how to do taxidermy in an ancient church on a family farm in Lincolnshire. And I'm the kind of guy that likes to tinker and experiment and go really deep into things that I'm interested in. Adam: So it was just a, it wasn't, this wasn't, 'I'm going to be a businessman', you just fancied having a go? Ben: Nothing to do with drinks. I was just curious. Adam: Amazing. Ben: And taking mint from my garden and then making a liquid that smells and tastes like that plant was really magical. Adam: I mean, I don't want to talk about Seedlip a lot. Ben: Me neither *laughs* Adam: No, but just, I suppose, the last question on that, it must have come a point at which you've gone, this is a project in my garage to, hey, we could do this. How important was that? How significant a moment was that? Ben: Yeah, so the two key turning points were one, driving into London to go out for dinner, obviously not drinking alcohol and being served the most disgusting, pink, fruity, sweet, horrible mocktail and thinking, why is it so difficult to get a decent option? That was one key moment. And the second key moment was I made 1,000 bottles of Seedlip two years after I'd started distilling and I thought they'd last six months and they sold out in Selfridges in three weeks. And that went from my kitchen to, yeah, 35 countries and set this movement alight, which is all part of, yeah, we're slowly meandering towards now where we've got to today. Adam: So you sold that to Diageo? Ben: I sold the majority of that to Diageo in 2019. Adam: You own a bit of it. Ben: Yes. Adam: And now you're starting a new venture. Ben: Yes. Adam: Which is? Ben: Which is a company called Pollen Projects that has two brands. Seasn, which is a pair of cocktail bitters. So people may know Angostura. Very intense, concentrated, strong liquids that transform your sparkling water or your cocktail. And then my favourite, favourite project, which is Sylva, which is all about trees and making aged non-alcoholic spirits. Adam: So we'll talk about the trees, we'll, let's go for a trip about that. But before we get into all of those specifics, I think I'm right in saying that you, one of the purposes, one of the sort of foundations of the work you do is a sort of purpose-led business. Again, is that a fair description? Ben: Absolutely. Adam: And the business talks about that. Now, I'm a business journalist. It's now ubiquitous for businesses to go, we're purpose-led and we feel we're strong in the community. And one of the problems for journalists, and I think the public at large, is distinguishing between those who have some sort of genuine purpose here and those who feel we need to add that as our marketing strand. Ben: Yeah. Adam: Do you recognise that issue and if so, how do you overcome that? It must be very difficult to go, no no, I know everyone's saying this, but I really believe it. Ben: I am very, very clear that the reason why I'm doing this is because this is a way in which I can express myself. This isn't work for me. This is how I express myself because it's what I'm interested in. I'm very interested in trees and I'm incredibly curious and I really want to learn. And so I believe that trees are this most incredible, underestimated source of flavour, as well as all the other wonderful things that we already know about trees. And I want people to love trees. And so that is, if I can make a product that meets a need in people's lives and tastes delicious and they want to drink again, that for me is a real win-win rather than, I don't know, any other kind of business purposes or made-up, I'm really clear, like half of this is really selfish. Adam: Selfish in what way? Ben: In the sense that I want to keep working with trees. And I want to explore trees in my working life rather than it being a hobby at the weekends. Adam: And is it about that? Is it about like, I like trees and I want to work in the environment and it's great because I've got a sort of commercial reason to do that. Is there something, I get that, is there something also about social purpose, about feeling that the business should do some good or not? I don't mean to judge it in either way because it's perfectly fine for business not to do that. Ben: Sure. I think it's baked in. Seedlip, Sylva, Seasn. Someone said to me, probably about 12 months ago, they're born good. They don't have any alcohol in them. They are there to offer choice and they are there to include people. That's already baked in, in terms of the product. And so, yeah, there's lots of details we have with Sylva of some of the environmental credentials around our packaging or what we do with our waste, all that, but they are sort of below the surface, as it were. Ultimately, we want people to have a delicious drink and a great option and great choice. Adam: And how important do you think the public feel that sort of role for companies? It feels to me that certainly since COVID, there was a bigger demand for the public to hear companies stand up for something. Do you see that or do you think that was there and has gone away or what's your view on that? Ben: I, or we, are big believers that our brands or the company should have a point of view and part of your company having a point of view is how you're positioned in the market and against your competitors and ultimately what makes you unique and different. Adam: The weather's been so good to us, so I don't want to stay in too long. But I suppose the last question, I read other interviews you've done talking about other business leaders who've inspired you. Who and why? Ben: So David Hieatt was one of the team behind howies jeans. And then he went on to, he's a Welshman, he moved back to Wales to a town that used to be famous for making jeans. And over a, I don't know, 10, 12 year period, he got that town making jeans again. And those jeans were typically worn by lots of creative people. I hate jeans, so I never bought a pair. Adam: Sorry, here I am wearing a pair of jeans, you should have said. *both laugh* Ben: I just hate wearing them. I hate wearing them. And I just followed, I can't even remember how I came across him. I followed his work. He then, I was amazed to be included in one of his, he calls them mavericks and makers. I was included in one of his lists of people doing interesting things. And then I was invited to give a talk at his sort of cult following retreat called the Do Lectures. Adam: The Do Lectures? Ben: The Do Lectures. And it's an amazing retreat on a farm in Wales. Everyone's sort of in wigwams and you kind of, you're in this old, old barn giving this, giving this talk. And I sort of plucked up a bit of courage to actually talk to him, but was quite starstruck actually. And I've just followed his writing and and he came out with a brilliant phrase that we used or adopted or adapted, which was Hiut Denim was an ideas company that made jeans. And I loved that. And we adapted that for Seedlip to be a nature company that made drinks. And I've adapted it again for Sylva to be a tree company that makes drinks. And so we are not just our product and the thing that we make, I guess. So David is, he's a wonderful writer, great thinker, and yeah, I love him. Adam: Okay, brilliant. Which is a good point. You raised the trees, which is why we're here. Let's go hug some. Ben: That's the most important room. That's the wood room. Adam: Okay, so this is, right. Sorry, what's the dog called? Ben: The dog is Pesto. Adam: Pesto, enormous Pesto. Enormous Pesto. So we're in a shed. That's an ultrasound you can hear in the background, which Ben will explain why. So you've got bits of wood with numbers on, so you're just trying out, oh, so you chipped up the wood? Ben: Yeah, we chip up the wood, that's plum. Adam: Right. Ben: So everything's from the UK. That'll be probably apple... So we process all the wood here. Adam: Right. And then, okay, so we can hear the ultrasound next door. So you've got lots of chips of apple, let's say. You dry it out in a domestic oven. You've got a couple of ovens. The point of putting it in this ultrasound is what? Ben: Yeah, so we want to extract the flavour and the character from the wood. So we distill grain in the lab where we just were. And then we fill a keg with the wood chips and the grain distilled. So you've got liquid and wood together. We add lots of oxygen to that to make it a really rich environment. And then we put it in our ultrasound machine. Adam: And the ultrasound does what? Ben: And the ultrasound gets into the wood and forces out all of the aromatic compounds. So we're talking esters, the tannins, the colour, all the bits that taste yummy, we take out, and that's cycling on 28,000 kilohertz ultrasound at temperature for varying different amounts of time. Adam: And then you have a liquid. Ben: Then we have a liquid. Adam: Which has got flavours in it. Ben: Exactly. And then we're separating the wood from the liquid, and we want all the wonderful flavour from the wood to go into the grain liquid. Adam: And is that literally just, well, I've got a bit of liquid, I'm going to add a bit of flavour to that? Is that sort of... Ben: Yeah, I mean, this process for me started 14 years ago. There's nobody in the world doing this. I've had to basically develop and create a whole production process. Adam: Wow, amazing. Ben: I'm interested in the whole tree, yeah, and what flavour is there in different parts of the tree, different ages of tree, different growing conditions of trees. I mean, the scope when there's 73,000 tree species is enormous. Adam: So you've got that... Ben: And then we have silver walnut, which was a very small, we only made 300 bottles. All of the wood comes from here. And that was a real, I wanted to try and capture kind of the forest in winter, so a dormant forest. And that uses black walnut wood, sweet chestnut wood, elm wood. We had an elm tree fall down and so we took some of that. And then we sourced some reindeer moss, which is actually a lichen from Scotland. And so, yeah, silver walnut, which comes in packaging made of the forest floor. So mycelium, you get a couple of glasses. Adam: So are you never cutting down a tree? Are you taking bits of it? Ben: I'm not saying we're never cutting down a tree, but we are being very choiceful with how we source and where it comes from. And look, trees are falling down all the time. Adam: Yeah, no, I understand. Ben: And we don't need to... Yeah, we can, basically, we can use a very small amount of wood for a lot of bottles. Adam: And what happens, so you get all this wood, you've chipped it up, you're extracting all the flavours, now you have a lot of wood without any flavour in it. So what happens to all that stuff? Ben: So the spent wood, two things. One, at the moment, because we are small and new and kind of figuring out what we're doing, everything goes back to the forest. So to compost, back to the forest floor. Adam: You just spread it around? Ben: Yeah. What we'd, I mean, we can use it as mulch in the orchard. What we'd love to do is, you know, I know we could dry that wood out and make incense from it, for example. I know that we could dry that wood out and make a surface. And there are lots of, there is terrazzo type products called ferrazzo. Adam: I don't know what those are. Ben: Terrazzo is the, you'll see it, it's speckly kitchen surfaces that have got bits of ceramics and yeah, well, somebody's launched ferrazzo with bits of wood in. Adam: *laughs* Okay fair enough. Ben: So yeah, I think there's a lot that we could do in the future. We can't eat wood, because our bodies can't process lignin. But in terms of, yeah, the afterlife of what happens when we've extracted the flavour and the colour, there's going to be options. Adam: So this whole area of using trees for a drink, I've not, I mean, I'm ignorant of loads of stuff, so maybe this is common and I just don't know about it, but how novel is this? Ben: It's, if you think about maple syrup, birch water, we've tapped trees for a long time. And then you think about aged alcoholic spirits, specifically whisky, I guess. And then you think... Adam: And oaked wines. Ben: And oaked wines. Or you think about barbecued food, smoked food. We actually do have this connection and a lot of history in terms of the flavour and power of wood for things that we kind of consume. But in non-alcoholic drinks, yeah, not in the process that we're using or to the breadth of trees that we're working with. Adam: It's quite primal in a way, the way you describe it there. You can imagine early cooking would have taken place on wood, wouldn't it? Ben: Yes, yes. Adam: So, and then we go, oh, actually that tastes quite nice, that sort of woody flavour to it. Ben: I liken it to, or the picture I have, the most perfect rose-tinted picture I have in my mind is, I am sat by a fire, a wood fire, on a wooden chair, at a wooden table, with a piece of paper, and a pen that uses oak gall ink. Adam: Right, yeah. Ben: And I am drinking, probably from a wooden vessel, some Sylva. Adam: OK. Ben: And that is, you know, that's kind of, that's pretty heavenly, I think, in my head. Adam: Have you ever... Ben: Here's a sweet chestnut tree. Adam: Have you ever written with oak gall? Ben: I haven't. Have you? Adam: Yes. Ben: Have you! And? Adam: Yeah, I mean... *both laugh* We just did it in the forest, so I'm sure you can improve the quality of the ink. But it is extraordinary that you go, I think, I could have got this wrong, but I think Shakespeare wrote with oak gall. Ben: Absolutely. A thousand years of printing history. Adam: Yeah, I mean, it is extraordinary and it sort of worked. You know, it wasn't great, but then we didn't know what we were doing. So it is interesting that you just go, take that off the tree, grind that up, let's write. And you go, it worked. That's extraordinary that that worked at all, really. So yeah, yeah. *both laugh* Ben: All because of a little wasp. I mean, it's kind of... Yeah, it is it is wild. Adam: Amazing. So I know you're running a business and this is both your home and then the business and whatever, but what do you think about the environmental debate? We live in interesting times where, I mean, even really recently, people have been talking about moving to net zero and then lots of very serious political figures talking about, well, no, that's actually not going to work and stepping back from commitments to electric cars, and I think politicians are doing that partly because they feel there isn't the public support for the costs of supporting the environment. What's your take on all this? Ben: I've been probably a few, maybe three, four years ago, I was really hopeful. I think there was some real energy behind COP and there was some just, there was, it felt like there was just a lot happening. And then the last couple of years, I guess, I felt less hopeful in terms of the, sustainability has lost its edge and lost, maybe just lost being a prior

As we head towards the New Year, we catch up with Woodland Trust CEO Darren Moorcroft to reflect on 2025 and look back at some of our favourite episodes. Darren takes us through some of the challenges and successes of the last 12 months and emphasises how the power of public support for woods and trees can create a greener, healthier future for people and nature. We also share some highlights from past woodland walks, including reading a tree with natural navigator Tristan Gooley, a former golf course being transformed into a thriving community space in Cheshire, and a visit to Welsh woodlands with Kate Humble. 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, as we head towards Christmas and New Year beyond that, many people will be looking back at what the past year brought them and indeed looking to the next year to see what things they want to do or what challenges they'll face. And I thought this was a good time for us to do that too on this podcast. Now, I have now done over 50 Woodland Walk podcasts for the Woodland Trust and so there's lots to pick from of some of my highlights over those 50 and I want to share just a few clips of those. But before we get to those clips, I wanted to share a chat I had with Darren Moorcroft, who is the chief executive of the Woodland Trust. And I began by asking him for his reflections on the challenges and achievements of the past year. Darren: So I think throughout 2025, probably the greatest challenges that we've faced have been a range of things, but I'd say probably the greatest has been the kind of political environment in which we're operating. Now as an organisation, we are apolitical so we advocate on behalf of woods and trees and it's felt a little bit like in 2025, there's been a growth agenda that's been versus nature and versus the environment and versus woods and trees, rather than thinking about them being an integral part of and actually underpinning our entire economy. So that's been a real challenge for us to continue to step up to and make the case for why woods and trees for people and nature are so really important. And I think that then plays into some of the great achievements that the Trust has had. It's not only been a case of taking the urgency of the cause that we are fighting for and growing the relevance and resonance of the organisation's voice so that we can stand up for people and who care about trees, the great thing about the Woodland Trust is our supporter base is really ethos sort of centred. So all of our estate is free and open to all, regardless of whether you are a member of the Trust. And that means that people aren't buying their way into the benefits that woods and trees give them. They are understanding that the benefits should be there for everyone and for nature. And therefore, it's really a strong argument when talking to decision makers at any level of government, whether that's local government, metro mayors or in the devolved administrations or Westminster, there's a real power to the voice that the Woodland Trust has for woods, trees, people and nature. And people care about woods and trees, as we saw with incidences like the Sycamore Gap and the Whitewebbs Oak in Enfield. When those trees are damaged, destroyed, then there's a real outpouring of grief, it's fair to say, because people care about this part of our natural heritage, which is really important in their individual lives, but actually for society as a whole. Adam: Well, there'll be more from Darren a little later on. But first, let's now go to one of my favourite clips. This is from a podcast where I met presenter and naturalist Kate Humble. Well, in early spring I went on a woodland walk in Wales with presenter, author and farmer Kate Humble, who was taking me around what promised to be some amazing woodland with her dogs. But as is increasingly common in these podcasts, We of course had to begin with me getting absolutely and entirely lost. Okay, this is an absolute disaster. Although I am bad at directions, this is not my fault. So Kate sent me a pin because she said, well, this is going to be hard to find my place. She sent me a map pin. I followed the map pin. Look, I'm here. I don't know if you can hear this. You probably can't hear this. This is the gate that's locked, which is across some woodland path. So I can't get there. And of course, there is no phone signal. So I'm going to have to drive all the way back to some town to find a phone signal and I'm already late. Okay. I have managed to find a village where there is a phone signal. I've managed to call Kate. And Kate...*laughs* Kate has clearly got the measure of me and has told me to give up. And she is now going to get in her car and find me in this village and I will follow her back. In the meantime, we have passed Google Map pins back and forwards, which apparently tell her that I'm sitting outside her house, but I really am nowhere near her house. So I seem to have broken Google, which, well, that's a first. Anyway, I've got a banana here. So if she's a long time, I have dinner. Meantime I'll just wait. This will never happen. This will actually never happen. We found Kate. We found her. So, yeah. So, well, you're leading me off with your two dogs. Kate: I am. I am. I'm leading you off into one of the most beautiful, I think. I mean, obviously I'm a little bit biased, but it is one of the most important areas of ancient woodland in Britain. This is the Wye Valley. We're the Lower Wye Valley, so we are the bit really where the River Wye is in its sort of last bit of its journey. It's risen in mid-Wales about... 136 miles from here. I know that because I've walked the whole route. Adam: Really? Kate: Yeah. Adam: We're not doing that today, are we? No, we're not. Kate: No, I promise. I promise, Adam *both laugh* So, yes, and we are basically about 5 or 6 miles from where it flows into the River Severn and then out into the Bristol Channel. And the woods around here are a lovely mix of broadleafs. So we're walking through broadleaf woodland now and this is literally, this is what I walk out of my front door. Aren't I lucky? Adam: You are lucky. Kate: I'm so lucky. So we've got a lovely mix of broadleaf woodland now and we're just coming into that time of year, which is the time of year that makes everybody's spirits lift because we are coming into spring. And if we actually just stop just for a second, you can hear that's a blue tit calling. And I mean, this isn't the perfect day for birdsong, but the birdsong is really picking up. And that's the lovely thing about living alongside woodlands. So even in the winter, even when you don't think there are any birds at all, what you hear in these woods is *makes ch-ch-ch noise* That's a very, very bad impression of a great spotted woodpecker. We're going to cut off piste a little bit and head down here. Adam: Is this a precursor warning that I'm about to get bumps and scrapes? Kate: This is a precursor warning that you might, yes, you might *laughs*. It's quite a steep descent. Adam: That's fine. Just as long as, my face is my fortune so as long as that's safeguarded throughout this, that'll be fine. Kate: *laughs* Of course. It'll be a soft landing. Adam: Okay, well that's good. Yeah, lots of leaves around. Kate: Lots of leaves. Adam: So, I mean, I thought we were going to chat about your conversion to nature and everything, but actually that's a lot of nonsense. This has been a constant in your life. Kate: Well, it's been, I mean, coming to Wales, so I did live in London, you know, after I left home. Adam: I mean, you didn't choose a nature career, did you? I mean, you're involved now, we can talk about that, but first, what was your first career? Kate: Well, I mean, career always seems such a grand word and that you've planned it. Adam: Yeah, OK. So your accidental career. Kate: So my accidental career. Well, I had this idea that I wanted to work in television, although, again, I don't really know where that came from. We're going just down here. Part of me also wanted to be a safari guide. Adam: Right, good. I can see the appeal of that. Kate: I went to, when I was 19, having never really been abroad at all, because again, our generation didn't really go abroad as a matter of course, and so I went to Africa when I was 19. Adam: Sorry, we're not talking on a holiday? Kate: No. It was a, it was a, it was probably a rebellion *laughs* Adam: You went as far away as possible, I'm not going out for the evening, I'm popping off to Africa. Kate: I'm popping off to Africa and I don't know when I'll be back. One of those. Adam: Good exit line. Kate: And I think it was that journey that turned my mind to really re-look and re-examine the natural world and think, it's extraordinary, it's extraordinary. It's mind-blowing in every way. And yeah, so even though I then came back and thought, I want to have this sort of career in telly, what I really wanted to do in my career in telly was work for the natural history unit. Adam: Right. And is that what you did? Kate: No. Adam: And do you feel, I mean, you feel passionate about it. Do you feel evangelical about it? Kate: Yes. Adam: So what, do you have a prescription to help to bring others on side? Kate: I wish it didn't mean, I wish you didn't have to ask me that question. I wish it didn't have to be an on side. Adam: Do you feel that's an unfair question? Kate: No, I don't. I think it's a very fair question because lots of people don't feel or don't, perhaps don't experience it, experience the advantages of the natural world or they haven't been given the opportunities to properly understand the impact that it can have on us and all those impacts are positive. I mean there's loads of science and you know it was talked about endlessly during the pandemic about how green spaces are good for our mental health, blue spaces are good for our mental health, being outdoors, being in nature, listening to birdsong, seeing plants grow, all those things are good for us. But we've got to a place where we've been so divorced from it, where we look for our pleasures in shopping malls and online, and we forget that actually all we need is right here. Adam: One of the themes that has come up over our 50 or so podcasts many times is the fact that a lot of people feel rather lost in the environmental debate. They know there's problems but don't feel they can do very much about it. And that's an issue I asked Darren Moorcroft, the Woodland Trust CEO, to address. Darren: I suppose in the face of some really big challenges that we face from climate change to nature loss, it can sometimes feel that that is such a big job, what can an individual do to play their part? And that might be that they can plant a tree if they have the opportunity, or if they're managing land, they are able to integrate trees into that land. But lots of us don't have that opportunity. So being a supporter of the Woodland Trust, giving a membership to the organisation, regular contributions adds real value. And it adds real value in a number of ways. The first of which is it gives that greater sense of voice when we as an organisation and me as chief executive can walk into what can be considered the corridors of power and say people care about woods and trees, they care about nature and they care about the benefits of those woods and trees for people. So it gives a real point to the sword when we're doing our advocacy. But the other way as well is, if you don't own large parts of, chunks of the UK, then actually what your contribution can do is be placed together with lots of others and we can make a difference with you and on your behalf. So, the individual, most individuals across the UK can't restore peatland. They can't plant new forests. But we can and we have done and we will do and continue to do so. And the only way we can do that is through those contributions that individuals make, which may on the surface only look like a small part of a bigger jigsaw, but without those small pieces, we don't able to create the picture that everybody wants to see in the landscape. Adam: Well that's Darren talking about landscapes, which reminded me of another podcast in which I met a famous explorer who had, I suppose, relearned the skill of navigating the landscape without any tools, maps, compasses or computers. Well today I'm off to meet a writer, navigator and explorer who has led expeditions in five continents and I'm told he's the only living person to have both flown solo and sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic. He's known as the natural navigator because he has learned how to find your way through the natural world, really by looking at the clues that nature provides us. Tristan Gooley: There's a very widespread feeling that we ought to connect with nature, that we should feel something, that if we just go and stand in a wood, that it should somehow magically make us feel something. But actually, our brains have evolved to be doing things and to be understanding things. And if we think about the animal kingdom, which we're obviously part of, we're not the fastest by a long way. We're not the strongest by a long way. We don't have the best senses. But the one thing we do really, really well, our one trump card, is an ability to take in a landscape and understand the patterns and build a more interesting and meaningful picture from what we see than any other creature can. So every single organism, including every single tree, is full of meaning, which is another way of saying nothing is random. And if we just come around the side of this one, I'll be able to show you, hopefully, and this one will be a good one to... So a nice introduction to the idea that that nothing is random is that if you ask anybody to draw a tree, you'll get a symmetrical tree. Symmetrical trees, of course, don't exist. When we think about it, we know that. Every single tree appears as a unique individual, and that means that there's a reason for all the asymmetries and the differences we find. I mean, as we look at this one here, we can see it's not symmetrical. There's more tree on the left side as we look at it, pretty sort of, pretty clear asymmetry. So noticing that it's not symmetrical on its own is not fascinating. But knowing that we get most of our light from the southern side and that every tree is harvesting light, we put those two pieces together and that tree is clearly showing us that south is out this way. Adam: Right. Is that true? Tristan: *laughs* It is, it is, yeah. I'm pretty confident on that one. Adam: Now, while a lot of the work of the Woodland Trust involves protecting what we have, a lot more is about creating new woodland in areas which didn't previously have it. And that's why I wanted to include this exciting podcast about a whole new landscape creation programme. 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 broadland, woodland, grassland meadows and wooded glades dotted with wild flowers. 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 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. Tim: 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 acorns? Tim: 40,000. A mature oak, yeah. Adam: It's worth pausing on that. Tim: *laughs* I know, it's incredible isn't it. Adam: 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. Adam: Fantastic. Well, it's been a great day for me, a half day out here, and I'll definitely return. It's an amazing, amazing, positive place, isn't it? And the sun has shone on us, sort of metaphorical smile from above. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Well from Liverpool, let's go back to the home of the Woodland Trust in Grantham, back to its CEO, Darren Moorcroft, for a final word from him. Darren: I think my message for everyone as we enter into 2026 is think about the difference that you can make and how the Woodland Trust can help you. Now that might be providing a membership subscription to the organisation in order for us to underpin the work that we do. It may be taking advantage and being one of the 7,000 plus schools and communities that we saw in 2025 stepping up and asking for free trees to plant into their community. Or many other ways, but the real difference that you can make is to stand up for woods and trees and the conversations you have and the actions that you take, because we as an organisation are fighting for the health of people and the planet with every tree. And that means improving the lives of people where they live, improving the lives of nature where they live, and also making sure that we broaden and deepen the support that woods and trees get so that when people say should we protect that tree, the automatic answer is yes. Should we restore that woodland? The automatic answer is yes. And should we create more woods and trees? Absolutely, the answer is yes. So that would be my message to people going into 2026. Adam: And so, if you can afford it and want to become a member of the Woodland Trust, they would very much like to have you join up and in fact, maybe give it as a gift this Christmas. But even if you can't afford it or don't want to, just by being the voice of nature, you will be one of its greatest friends. From all of us, to all of you, this year and next, can I wish you many happy wanderings. 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 are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the Visiting Woods pages. Tha

Dive into the inspiring story of Hall Farm Estate in Devon, a fairytale land once owned by Trust founder Ken Watkins . W e meet current custodian, tenant farmer Seb , to discover how crucial conservation work is continuing here as the 300-acre farm i nt egrat es more trees into a regenerative farming system. As we walk through picturesque heathland and wood pasture on the edge of Dart moor, Seb tells us of the ambitious plan to ge t an astonishing 20,000 new trees in the ground and how they'll benefit his cows and the local landscape . Full of enthusiasm and love for the land, he hopes the project will encourage more landowners to adopt tree‑rich, nature‑friendly approaches. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk We're supporting the sharing of farming activity at Hall Farm thanks to funding from Dartmoor's Dynamic Landscape, made possible with the National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players. 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, for this podcast we're going to Hall Farm Estate in Devon, which is very special . It once belonged to the Woodland Trust founder, Ken Watkins, a nd it's where he brought to life his vision to protect and restore nature, which is continuing today. Five decades later, that vision is still at the heart, really, of what the Woodland Trust does. Now, the farm I'm going to sits on the fringe of Dartmoor at Harford. It's made up of G or age Waste, Hall Plantation, Kingswood, and Hall Farm. And there's a rich mix of habitats , i t includes ancient and veteran trees, mature hedgerows, ancient woodland, and even , so unusual, not just in the UK, but of course in the world , i t also includes temperate rainforest species. And what's going on at Hall Farm is particularly exciting, and I think it's fair to say ambitious as well, because in addition to continuing the conservation work that Ken Watkins started, it integrates woods and trees within regenerative farming. And so it's bringing together a proper commercial farm and a sense of looking after the land and the environment around you in a very particular way. I'm going to find out how that works and to meet the people doing it. If you want to know where Hall Farm Estate is, if you know what you're doing with maps, it is grid reference SX632592, map reference explorer 28, OS Land Ranger 202. Or you can just go to the Woodland Trust website and look up Hall Farm Estate. That's woodlandtrust.org.uk. Enough from me. Let's go to the farm. Seb : Good morning. I'm S eb Powell and me and my partner Freya have just, well, six months ago taken on Hall Farm, the tenancy at Hall Farm. And we're going to show you around. Adam : Brilliant. And we're starting at th e, his is really lovely. There's old farm buildings over there. It's all super picturesque, much more picturesque than many of the farms I've been on. Seb : Yeah, it's definitely a special place. I think, I mean, the first time I came here, I fell in love with it pretty much instantly. And I think it has that effect on most people. It's described as a fairy tale land, I think, in a sort of historic book about Hall Farm. And why is that? I suppose it's just rich in natural character . Th ere 's these old walls , t here's a beautiful lea , I think we'll walk past in a minute , s o you've got this trickling sound of water in a lot of the parts of the farm. Lots of trees, obviously. And we're on the edge of the moor. Adam : We're going to go for a walk, but we're starting with a map to explain where on earth we are, the sort of... the journey we're about to go on. So just talk me through what we're going to see here. Seb : The map shows us, obviously, the farm , i t' s 300 acres of which about 8 0 acres are woodland and the rest is pasture. So it's an upland farm. And then we've just thought, well, how can we integrate all sorts of different types of tree planting? So on this map, we have an idea here, which is in one field called the d ehesa , which is based on a Portuguese, Spanish, like cork oak , not plantation, but where livestock would basically live in amongst the woodland. So we're going to try and do that here. Not with cork oak, but with native oaks, but also walnut trees, for example. Adam : Oh, look, is that a neighbour passing through? Seb : That is actually, we've got an event here today , t hey're demonstrating the use of no fence collars. So yeah , part of the farm actually is we have quite a lot of sort of outreach stuff going on and it's great , i t gets us involved with all the neighbours . Adam : Brilliant. Okay, so that noise of that Land Rover is a bit of the outreach. Very good . Okay, so you've got... That's about, okay, that's a great place to start. I want to talk to you about that. So lead on to wherever we should go first. Seb : Well, let's go, we're going to go down the hill a little bit. We're going to go to a place where trees have already been planted about 40 years ago. So when we were coming up with this map and the ideas of what we're going to do, we looked at what was here already and trees have already been incorporated here and we thought, well, we can learn from this. That's what we're going to do. Adam : Lead on. So one of the special things about this farm is its use of something called silv o pasture . So what is that? Seb : Silv o pasture , in essence, is in tegrating trees and livestock. So it's sort of bringing woodlands, where woodlands meet pasture, I suppose, and trying to integrate the two , merge the edges of where those blurred lines of woodland in theory can come into field and think of all sorts of ways how we can sort of recreate that. Adam : Okay, so I'll hold on. So, okay, so what is the purpose of silv o pasture ? Is it just a charitable thing to get trees into the ground or is it a different type of farming? I don't quite understand the benefit . Seb : Yeah , it really is a different type of farming where you incorporate trees into the farming system and then the trees will have benefit to the farming system or the livestock in the system. So in our case, we've got cattle and they will benefit in a dry, hot year from the shelter of the trees. And in the winter, if the cattle are outdoors, they will benefit from the, as you know, the trees acting as a windbreak . Adam : Which sounds sort of obvious and easy. So why doesn't everyone do that? I mean, just a tree providing free shelter rather than having to take the cows into barns or something. It sounds like a cheap way of doing it. Why isn't everyone doing this if it's so straightforward? Seb : Well, I think it's an old practice and most people know that, you know, we're in a modern time where we don't always use old practices anymore. So there's a bit of a revival of what in Devon used to be called the Devon Barn, which is basically just cattle up against the hedge. And we're just trying to revive that really and use it with a modern twist , incorporating trials of how trees could , you know new tree planting, not just traditional hedges, could be incorporated into fields in trees. Adam : And how complex is it? I mean, the way you describe it sounds very simple . Look, we need some shelter. We'll chuck some trees in the ground and wait a few years and then there'll be shelter. Is it that simple or is there something more complex going on? Seb : I think in essence, yeah , it is really simple . I mean, decide where you want the trees and plant them. The only complexity probably comes in is how long is it going to take for those trees to grow? Did you decide that where you planted them was actually the place you wanted them or are you going to go in five years and decide that you want them over there? And are they going to be eaten by anything? Are they going to survive? Is there going to be a drought? So there's challenges, but I think that's part of our sort of journey in a way, is also to learn from the process. Adam : I want to ask you some more of that, but we've come to , not a puddle , I'd say this is a minor lake w e've got to cross here ! Okay, so there's a fence. So we're going to open the fence. Oh, are we going to climb across that? Seb : Yeah there's a v ery cleverly perched. .. Adam : Okay, right, we're crossing. Sorry, I'm just concentrating so I'm not talking or holding the microphone. We're crossing a sort of little stone bridge, which is very nice . I thought I was going to have to try and leap across that. Okay, so yes, we're talking about planting trees and everything. Is there any downside to it at all? Seb : I think in the short term, if you look at it , y ou look at tree planting with like a conventional farmer's hat on, you're losing potentially productive land. So you've got to wait, you've got to offset that , y ou know, for maybe five or ten years, there's going to be l ess, this land is going to have less pasture. And w e're going to accept that and r ealise that, but in 10 years ' time, t here's going to be these trees and t hey're going to offer all these benefits. Does that make sense? Adam : Yeah , it does. Very good . Okay, we're through the... wettest part without opening to a much broader field. Is this one of your fields? Seb : This is, yeah, this is Welsh Hill, and this is actually one of the first fields, or the first field, where we put the cattle into when we moved here, because there was some grass here. And the cattle, the first thing they did was, in fact, we let them into those woods, which are about 40 years old. And they went in for the shelter, because there was a howling easterly wind, and they started ca l ving in there. Adam : Wow, that's so the cows here are living outside all the time. Is that the idea? Seb : Yeah , try and keep the cattle out for the whole year . Adam : And the advantage of that is what? Seb : Well, so having the cattle out all year, the main benefit to us is it simplifies the system. In a traditional farming system, you'd make hay or silage or whatever to feed the cattle when they're in the barns in the winter. You'd also have to bed them. And there's a whole process there involved that you're making hay and then you bring it in, then you're feeding it every day in winter, then you're mucking out the sheds, then you're spreading the muck. We've kind of turned it a little bit on its head, and this isn't a new practice, it's just a practice that's being revived. You could call it regenerative agriculture if you want. You could call it traditional farming, you could call it organic farming. But basically it's just a very low input approach which simplifies our life and means that the cattle actually also have a simplified life as well. They're outdoors doing what they want to be doing. Adam : That sounds amazing. It just sounds so obvious to me. I'm just thinking it can't be that obvious because otherwise everyone would be doing that. And it sounds like your response to that is, well, people are just stuck in their ways. That's not how a lot of farmers behave because that's not how they behave, is it? Seb : Yeah , very good question and possibly one I can't answer. All I know is that it's working for us and that we try and upsell our end product as best we can, so we're getting the most value we can for our milk and our beef, and reduced as much as we can the costs involved in producing those products. So outwintering the cattle, having the cattle grazing, having, you know, I quite often think of myself as a human muck spreader, but I'm not muck spreading, I'm just moving the cattle , if that make sense . Is it replicable? I don't see why it isn't . And there's more and more farms now that are realising that they could actually adapt this system with whatever numbers of cattle you have. And actually, weirdly , works better with higher stock numbers, believe it or not . So the concept of mob grazing, which you might have heard of , which is something we're using to g raze our cattle, which is basically move them around in little mobs so that they put fertility into the soil in concentrated doses, and then they have the soil and the grassland has maximum rest period. It's basically replicating what happens in like the Savannah where like herds are, will they be wildebeest? Adam : Yeah . Wildebeest in the Savannah, yeah , not in Devon, but in the Savannah, yeah . Seb : That's what they're doing. And they are like having that sort of almost like slash and burn effect like happens in the Amazon of rejuvenating the soil and then giving it a rest. So we're just duplicating something that is a natural process. Adam : Great. So, but you've not got any trees in this field. I can see a couple over there. Seb : Yeah , interesting . So there's existing tree planting that's happened before us. So 200 years ago, maybe plus, where the temperate rainforest down in the valley along the River Erm e has been buffered with trees. And we're going to basically do another tranche of buffering that woodland a gain, so doing our little bit to extend existing woodland around this farm. Adam : And it's interesting, you said that the trees over there were pre-existing, but you said how long ago? Seb : I think only 40 years ago. Adam : Yeah , that's what I thought you said. I mean, I think often we think about forests and trees, I'll plant them now and it's always that old phrase , you know, you plant it there for your children, not you will never benefit from the shade. But these aren't small trees, these are huge trees. And that's grown in a few decades. That's surprising, isn't it? Seb : Yeah , it's surprising and it's also quite topical in that I think the person who had the foresight to get those trees planted was Ken Watkins, who's founder of the Wood land Trust. So we can learn from what his vision was on this farm. He was like, I think trees might fit in the corner of this field. Little did he know that 40 years later, a farmer comes along and he's like, they're really useful and we're going to put our cattle in there. In t he summer, I think it was August , t he cattle were here a nd I actually came to check them and I couldn't see them anywhere. And initially they were all in the bottom of that barn. And the reason they were in the bottom of that barn was because it was a cool place. They'd all crammed into the bottom of the stone barn. But then I thought, well, why don't we let them into the trees? They don't have to be jammed in the bottom of a barn. So we cut open the fence of this 40-year-old tree planting and they went in. Adam : And they don't damage the trees ? Seb : I mean, these are now established trees. You know, they're , w hat are we talking , t hey're like 12, 15, 20 metres high. If anything, they have, like the trampling effect they have in there is almost having a positive effect. The hooves will clear a bit of ground. In theory, then if we close that off, there would be some natural regeneration would happen. You know seeds could take in the areas that the cattle had disrupted the surface of the ground. Adam : Okay, where to? Seb : I think w here we're going to go next is into a place called Blacklands Corner, which is at the bottom of a really beautiful bit of h eathland. Quite wet. Adam : Okay, I'm prepared for wet. Off we go. Okay, so we've come into what we were talking about, the wood pasture, which is lots of trees and some grass. So the cows come in here and graze amongst the trees. All very picturesque, isn't it? It's a beautiful part , I wish I had a proper, we were just saying, I wish I had a camera crew here, we could have made a beautiful video, so maybe next time. But it's a nice place to pause for a moment, just as the cow s find it nice, I too find it nice to stop here. I'm just interested in how , your journey here . So were you always a farmer or w ere you always interested in this area? What brought you to this farm in Devon? Seb : Good question. I was brought up on a farm. My dad was a farmer and then we left the farm. I loved everything about the farm and I followed my dad like, you know, like he was just everything he did was gold. And we left the farm when I was about 10 and I just always knew I wanted to farm. Skip forward 20 years , I did all sorts of other things, driving buses around Scotland and tourists around South America and having a great time and avoiding real life. And then I met my partner Freya and someone inadvertently said, you don't fancy milking cows ? And I said, yes, that's the ticket. And the n it all began eight years ago and we bought some cows and away we went. Adam : That's a huge change from driving tourists around the Highlands of Scotland and Latin America to farming in Devon. What is the appeal of this lifestyle then for you? Seb : I think, I mean, I've got a lot of nostalgic memories, I suppose, of growing up on a farm. I love the outdoors. I've always loved the outdoors. I like good food . Farming combines a lot of those things. It's loving the outdoors, like you're basically just, you're in the outdoors, so you're doing something really nice, feels wholesome. It's quite direct, what you're doing, you know, producing food whilst looking after a beautiful place. It just ticks a lot of boxes of things that I'm interested in, really. Adam : One always hears it's a hard life being a farmer, is it? Seb : Depends which day you ask a farmer on, I suppose. I think you can sometimes find yourself being a bit of a jack of all trades. So, one day you might be trying to work out your invoices or, the price of your yoghurt and the next day you're trying to work out where you're going to plant however many trees. I think yes and no. There's lots of amazing moments of beauty and then there's bits where you're like, God, what am I doing? Normally I start off at get the kids off, they're off at 7.30 to school, and I go off and get the cows and milk the cows. We only milk the cows once a day, so in theory, when you milk them, could be midday, could be six in the evening. So kind of the system we're designing is also one that's sustainable for our life, if that makes sense. Adam : Okay, that also surprises me. You see, I'm a city boy, I used to present breakfast n ews and we had to start at 3.30 in the morning. And I always thought, me and the milk farmers, w e're up at 3.30 in the morning, but t hat's not true. I t's just breakfast news presenters who are starting that shift. S o that's really interesting. S o this farm is different and special because of its connection to t he Woodland Trust. How did you get involved in the Woodland Trust and , not your farming journey, but what made you interested in the importance of trees? Seb : I think I've always known that trees are important. They're a good thing. I was actually born in Finland and Finland is covered in trees. So whether it's like in my genetics, I don't know. But as we started farming, we soon started integrating trees as part of our farming. And now, being tenants of the Woodland Trust, we've got the full backing of all their , I suppose, knowledge and know-how and passion to support us in integrating more trees. Adam : I mean, we never want to be too political, but we happen to be talking on the day that I hear the Conservative Party is perhaps thinking of dropping net zero targets for lots of reasons that they feel will be popular amongst a lot of people that are worried about cost of energy and the competitiveness of British industry. But I think it'd be worrying to a lot of the environmental movement. So I'm just interested in your view, not on that policy, but generally on how tuned in the nation is to the environmental message , d o you think everyone's on board, there's still people to be brought over, or that it is a live debate? And you know, well, maybe planting trees everywher

You might look at everyday items in a different light after this episode, as we hear best-selling author and Woodland Trust ambassador, Jonathan Drori CBE, reveal some of the fascinating things we make with plants. From the well-known coffee bean to the tree bark that's used in spacecraft, he shares some of the amazing relationships between familiar objects and the natural world as we meet beneath a beautiful beech tree on Parliament Hill in London. These stories and more feature in Jonathan's latest book, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, which aims to spark an interest in nature for younger readers. He explains how discovering the wonder of nature in a fun, exciting way as a child can inspire a lifelong connection, just as it did for him. We also discover why fruit is sweet, the value of the mandrake plant, how beech is thought to resist lightning and more. 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: Jonathan Drori CBE, is a man of many talents. He's a trustee of the Eden Project and of Kew Gardens, a member of the Royal Institution, a man who used to be a senior commissioning editor at the BBC, and he's also an ambassador for the Woodland Trust and a best-selling author of books such as Around the World in 80 Trees and his latest, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, a book for younger people about the plants in their lives and the things they make which are all around them. And whereas these podcasts often take me on long journeys, this time, well, it's just a hop, skip and a jump away in London at Parliament Hill, where we met to talk about his book and the things we didn't know about the stuff around us all. Right, we are... it's a bit windy right here. It actually sounds windier than it is, but we are in Parliament Hill, or thereabouts, with Jonathan Drori, who has written the stuff that stuff is made of, and is also a big noise, essentially, in the Woodland Trust itself, of which we can talk lots about. But we're standing by a beech tree. So, Jonathan, why did you write this book? Jonathan: I wanted to do something that would make kids kind of interested in the natural environment. Starting with the things they're interested in, which are kind of ice cream and chocolate and sport and dinosaurs and all that kind of thing. And use their own interests to sort of spark other interests in nature, in trees and plants, and also actually in history and folklore and culture, which are all sort of bound up with those things. One of the things I've tried to do with the book is to explain things from the plant's point of view as well as from a human point of view. So there are all these qualities that we desire plants for, whether that's sort of sweet things to eat or things to build with or things to make musical instruments out of. And they're all in the book and that's fine. But I've also tried to explain, you know, why has bamboo evolved in the way that it has? And why has a beech tree evolved the way it has? Why does chocolate have sweet mush around the seeds? You know, why do the grasses feed us? Why is sugar cane sweet? And why do we love it? Adam: And so through this book, you're trying to attempt to do that by explaining stuff like tea and chocolate, indeed, where it comes from. Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, there are 30 different species that I deal with in the book. And on the right-hand side of the page, there's a whole lot of information about the way that the plant grows, how it's cultivated, the relationships that it has with other plants, with the little critters that might pollinate it or disperse the seeds. And on the left-hand side, there's a whole lot of stories about the plant, all kinds of kind of fascinating facts and really about the human relationships with that plant. Adam: Do you think we have lost that connection with the plants around us. So that this sort of stuff might have been really obvious a few generations ago or not. Jonathan: *laughs* A leading question, m'lud! Yes, I mean, you know, with urban living and things being in packets at the supermarket, you know, we perhaps don't think very much about where the basic materials for our existence come from, whether it's things we eat or things we build with or things that we just sort of like looking at and playing with. Adam: Is it important to know those connections? I mean, you as someone who likes nature, I can understand why you might feel that's important. But is it important for us all to rebuild that connection? Jonathan: I think that my love and interest in nature came from my parents, actually, at the time, dragging me around Kew Gardens and Richmond Park and telling me stories about the trees and plants that were growing there. And they did that in such a way that I would be interested because they knew who I was and so they found the things that would sort of excite me. And I think I want to do the same for young people so that they grow up with a kind of interest and admiration and some sort of understanding of nature. But you can't sort of ram it down people's throats. It needs to be fun. Adam: Yeah. But why is that important? I understand that's what you want to do, but why is it important? Jonathan: Well, we've only got one planet. And if we don't look after it, then, you know, our lives and livelihoods are doomed. So that's the sort of very basic reason. And also we are part of nature, so just, not having an understanding or rejecting nature is kind of rejecting part of ourselves, I think. Adam: So it's a soft environmental message here. And that's also seems to me important because, well, from my perspective anyway, it feels like a lot of environmental charities and environmentally minded people push a sort of narrative, the world could end, it's all a disaster. And actually, I worry that, although it's well-meaning, it might turn people off. Now that isn't what you're doing with this. Jonathan: No, there's none of that in the book, none of it at all. What I've tried to do is to excite people about the stories of pollination, of the little critters that live in and around plants, the relationships that the plants have with other plants and so on in the environment, and make that sort of exciting and fun and interesting enough that people will just say, say to themselves, that's kind of something that's worth protecting. Maybe they won't think that for 10 or 15 years. Adam: There's lots of interesting stories here. I think the one that really struck me, I think, was about vanilla. So vanilla, obviously, people use it in cooking, they might use essence of it or whatever. But am I right in saying, you think it's in the book, you actually go, there was a boy, and you name this boy... oh sorry is that a bird I can hear? *laughs* sorry! Jonathan: It's the parakeets. Adam: Oh it's the parakeets, I thought there was a squeaky wheel behind me! No no. All right, parakeets in the background. A named boy who taught the world how to pollinate vanilla. Tell me that story. Jonathan: Yes, it was an amazing story actually about vanilla that in about the sort of 1840s, when they brought vanilla plants over from Mexico where they were native, to Africa where they wanted the plantations to grow and the little bee that pollinates vanilla didn't really travel. And so they had to find something else that would pollinate the vanilla plants so that the vanilla plants would propagate and grow. And sadly, they couldn't find any insect that would do that. No local insects would do this in Africa or outside Mexico. So all the vanilla plants had to be pollinated by hand. And it was a 12-year-old boy, Edmond Albius, who worked out how to do this. And by basically sort of cutting a bit of membrane and then squidging the two bits together and right to this present day, that's the way that vanilla is pollinated, by hand. And that's why it's so expensive. Adam: It's amazing, isn't it? Apart from the vanilla story, do any others stand out in your mind? Is there ones your favourites? Jonathan: Oh, it's like asking your favourite children, isn't it? I mean, there are all sorts of things in there that I notice when I talk to young people, to sort of eight, nine-year-olds, they sort of come alive. Those who've read the Hogwarts stories and Harry Potter, they're amazed to discover that mandrake is actually a real plant. And of course, mandrake used to be very, very valuable because it was one of the very few plants that could be used as an anaesthetic. And people used to, back in the Roman days, they used to mix it with wine and then sort of do minor operations and things. Don't try this at home! It's actually a real plant. It grows somewhat, I've seen this in this country, but it grows in Italy quite well and it has these rather sort of mind-altering attributes to it, which are a bit odd. Adam: So it might be used by people who want that sort of druggy effect, but does it have any other purpose? Jonathan: Well, not now, but it was an anaesthetic, and anaesthetics were so sort of unlikely, you know, if you think about it, you take something and it makes the pain go away, that people associated the plant with witchcraft, especially as it gave you the impression of flying. And so a plant that could alter your outlook and the way that you see the world so profoundly, and the way you perceive it so profoundly, was associated with witchcraft. And people made all sorts of stories about the mandrakes that they, that when you pulled it out of the ground, they said, that you could hear it scream because sometimes the roots look a bit like a person, especially with a bit of judicious whittling. And so people would say you've got to get a dog, tie the dog to the mandrake root and then kick the dog or throw it some food and it pulls it out. And the scream, they said, of a mandrake root could make you, could kill you. Adam: And weren't they doing that to stop people, scaring people away from getting their valuable mandrake? Jonathan: That's right. It was such a valuable plant that the ideal thing to do would be to put these superstitions around, these notions around, so people wouldn't pull them out, because it's very valuable. Adam: Hippy dragon sort of thing. Well, look, we are here in London, a park in London, a beautiful park. But you've taken me to one of the few trees that actually appears in the book, because so many of the, well, I think almost all the trees really, you wouldn't find in the UK, is that right? Jonathan: Well, you can certainly find eucalyptus. You can, you know, it's not a native, but you can find them here. And any other trees that are in there, you'd certainly find in botanic gardens. And there are fir trees, Christmas trees in there as well. But here we are by a lovely, lovely beech. And I mean, there are lots of reasons I love beech trees. In the book, one of the reasons that it's in there is because beech wood is made for, is used for veneer and it's used for making furniture and so on in a sustainable way, so it's a very pleasing wood. Adam: And why is it good for furniture then? Jonathan: It's stable, it doesn't shrink too much. Adam: Is it bendable, is it one of those trees that you can... Jonathan: Yeah and you can sort of use steam to bend it into the shapes that you want. And there are these fantastic machines that make veneer by sort of peeling off a kind of onion ring, rotating the trunk and then sort of peeling off the wood underneath to make veneer. As I say, using sustainable beech forests. But one of the things that I love about the beech is the link with superstition because in Germany, and actually in quite a few countries in Europe, there's this saying that lightning never strikes a beech tree. And in actual fact, lightning strikes beech trees just as often as any other trees that are of similar height. But beech trees seem to survive. And the reason they survive is because of this wonderfully smooth bark. The bark continually renews itself, unlike other trees. And so you've got a layer that is sloughing off all the time and leaving this very smooth bark. And that smoothness means that during wet weather, during a storm, the outside of the tree has a continuous film of water on it. It's wet all the way and that can act as a lightning conductor, whereas the craggy old oak, that has dry bits in it and so the electricity from a lightning strike is diverted through the middle of the tree and would blow it asunder. So the beech tree can survive. Adam: Fantastic. Talking about the bark on the tree, one of the other things I spotted in your book was, I think it's cork trees and how the bark of that is special in the way we use it, but also in the way that the tree regenerates, just explain a bit about that. Jonathan: Yes, I mean, most trees, if you sort of cut a whole ring around the tree, it'll die. But cork actually regenerates itself. So you can harvest the cork every 10, 12 years or so. And cork forests in the Iberian Peninsula, in Portugal and in Spain have a fantastic sort of ecosystem around them. The lynx and wild eagles and all sorts of wonderful things that live in and around. And also pigs go rooting for the for the acorns. And that ecosystem is a very important one. And it depends on us all using cork. So don't use plastic cork. Adam: Right. Oh, I was going to say, unfortunately, a lot of wines now have plastic. Jonathan: Try and go to the ones which are made out of proper traditional cork. And you're doing the planet a service by doing that. Another interesting thing about cork is that it's a fantastic insulator and it's actually used in the nose cones of spacecraft. Adam: So why? That is, I did read that and that was extraordinary that something as advanced as a spacecraft would be using cork. It seems unbelievable. Jonathan: Well, you know, millions of years of evolution have given the cork oak this way of resisting fire. So it's got tiny, tiny air pockets, minuscule microscopic air pockets in a non-flammable kind of medium. And that is an amazing insulator. And it's light, it chars on the outside and then flames just can't get through. Adam: And it's soundproofing isn't it? Jonathan: Yes, it's used in recording studios. Adam: Yes. Well, when I was 17, I took a fancy to corking my whole bedroom in cork tiles, which looked terrible to be honest *laughs*. It took my father years to pry it off the wall again. Jonathan: Was that in the seventies perhaps? Adam: Yes exactly. It was trendy then for a short period. Jonathan: Roman women used to wear cork-soled sandals, which you can still get, but so they didn't sort of walk in the poo and whatnot. But they're very good, very light, very insulating. Adam: One of the ones I suppose we should talk about, interesting, is cotton, because it has an interesting background, a natural background, but also one, of course, deeply connected with slavery and everything. Jonathan: So, you know, it was used in... South America among the Aztecs and so on to make armour actually. They made very, very thick cotton twill that they used as armour. And then it became fabulously valuable in the sort of 17th, 18th century especially, as a textile for our clothing. And unfortunately, as you say, it's got this link with slavery along with sugarcane and tobacco, these were the big crops that people grew, slave owners grew, in the Caribbean and in the southern states of North America, and then made the finished products in Britain that were then sold all over the world. Adam: And I mean, you have some nice, lovely illustrations here of actually the cotton on the plant and it's a puffball. It doesn't look real, actually. Jonathan: It's bonkers! It's an absolutely bonkers plant. Adam: Yes but didn't people, when they first saw it, thought they were actually little sheep or something? Jonathan: Yes *laughs* Well, the writers of the time, you know, they were all sort of knew that they would get a big audience if they made up some stuff so I'm not sure whether they really believed it. But certainly there was a textbook of the, I think it was the 17th century or early or late 16th century, where they sort of wrote, had diagrams of, because they thought it must be some kind of wool, they had diagrams showing little tiny sheep at the end of twigs on the plant *laughs* which supposedly would, you know, sort of the twigs would reach the ground in the evening and then the little sheep would, I don't know, wander off or something. Adam: No one actually ever believed this, you're saying? Jonathan: Well, I mean, no, well, I think it was created as a spin, but I think a lot of people did believe it, actually, in the same way that they believed in sea monsters and all those sort of naval stories that were brought back. And it was a very, yes, people believed all sorts of kind of nonsense and about where cotton came from. But the plant itself is very real and quite an odd one because you have these lovely sort of pale creamy flowers. It's sort of quite big, the size of a walnut kind of thing, you know. And then you get the seed pod which is absolutely bursting with all the fibre inside and the fibre's there to help the seeds carry on the wind. That's what the plant wants it for. But these burst open with this sort of great wodge of, I suppose, it looks like cotton wool. And it pretty much is cotton wool. And then the seeds are removed in a process called ginning. And the fibre that's left is then spun into thread. Adam: Amazing story. The last one I suppose I really want to talk about is something you started with saying, you know, engaging younger people in things they know like chocolate. Chocolate doesn't come from Tesco or Sainsbury's, it comes from the cacao plant. Now, tell me a bit about that, but specifically what surprised me, if I remember this correctly, you said the chocolate we know was invented in England, is that right? Jonathan: Well, the chocolate bar was invented by Fry back in the middle of the 19th century. And before that, people would have chocolate drinks, which were quite popular, especially at the time when coffee houses were very sort of blokey places. Adam: This is about the 1800s, is it? Jonathan: Yeah. Coffee houses were places where, you know, men would go. Adam: Yeah, they were they were risky places, they were sort of like pubs almost, you know, like... Jonathan: Yes, whereas families and women would go to chocolate houses. And some of those chocolate houses then became, you know, well-known clubs in London around Pall Mall and so on. They, but chocolate originally from Central America was a drink that would be taken quite bitter, mixed with maize, very, very nourishing, and was sometimes coloured with red dye, sort of symbolizing blood. And it was part of kind of rituals that they had where they, some of them were quite unpleasant rituals actually and then when it came, when chocolate came through the Spanish to Europe in the sort of 16th century, people immediately started adding sugar and milk and things to it, made it a lot more palatable. Adam: Right. So it wasn't just the chocolate bar, so we really made it into the sweet drink that everyone knows. Maybe not England, but Europe. Jonathan: Yes, and the and the chocolate bar was, that started in Britain. That was a British thing, with Fry and I think you can still get Frys chocolate? Adam: Yeah, I was going to say, I do see it every now and then. It's not as popular as Cadbury's and all the others, but one does still see it. Jonathan: You know, if you think about it from the plant's point of view, the reason that it's got this amazing fruit, which is about the size of a junior rugby ball, that grows very peculiarly on the stem of the plant, on the tree trunk, the reason it's got this

Join us at Bradgate Park in Leicester with Jules Acton , author, former podcast guest and Trust ambassador, while our regular host Adam enjoys a summer holiday. We meet s enior park ranger Matt who gives us a tour as he explains his role in caring for the site and its amazing trees. We've come to the park to see one in particular: a magnificent 830-year-old oak. It's in the running for Tree of the Year 2025. This year's contest celebrates our cultural connections with trees, shining a light on those that are local landmarks, sources of passion, inspiration and creativity. Find out what makes Bradgate Park's oldest oak special and vote for your favourite by 19 September. 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. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Jules: Good morning. I'm Jules Acton. I'm an ambassador for the Woodland Trust. I've been in this job for 10 years this month and it's been a fantastic 10 years. I've loved every day because I get to meet some amazing trees and woods and even more than that, I also get to meet lots of amazing people who love trees and woods and who are inspired by them. So Woodland Trust members, other supporters, staff and volunteers. And I think one of the reasons people love trees so much is not just for the fact they provide all the wonderful services they they store our carbon, they provide fresh air, they can help filter pollution. But they're also absolutely entwined in our culture. And that's been taking place over hundreds and thousands of years. So our, particularly our native tree species tree species are absolutely embedded in our culture, and every old tree has a story to tell. Now, the reason we're here today is that we're going to talk about Tree of the Year and the theme of the Tree of the Year is culture and the way trees are embedded in culture. Ten magnificent trees have been chosen by a panel of experts. Each has a wonderful story to tell, and members of the public can go and vote for their favourite tree on the Woodland Trust website. We are here in Bradgate Park car park. It is a golden morning and we're surrounded by trees. I can see oak trees, hawthorns, birches, hazels. It's absolutely gorgeous with the dappled sunlight falling down on us through the leaves. We're here to meet a particularly special tree. It's Bradgate Park's oldest oak tree, and it's about 20 minutes walk from the car park. So I see my colleague Natasha. She's over there waiting at the edge of the car park, waiting for Matt. Hello Natasha. Natasha: Hello. Ohh hi! Jules: Can you tell us a bit about your role, Natasha and what you do at the Woodland Trust? Natasha: Yeah, I'm a social media officer, so I just help create and schedule all social media content, jump on whenever there's an opportunity like today. Jules: And today you're going to be helping with the recording. Natasha: Yeah, getting a few clips behind the scenes of how we record the podcast so we can share that and a few bits for our website as well and YouTube. Jules: Thanks Natasha. Now I think we have just seen somebody drive up who might well be Matt. He's he's appeared in a very groovy looking buggy. And here we go. I believe this is Matt. Hello. Matt: Good morning, Jules. Jules: Hello, Matt, hi, lovely to meet you. Matt: Nice to meet you. Welcome to Bradgate Park. Jules: Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about your role, Matt? Matt: So yeah so I've I've worked at Bradgate Park for just over 20 years now and main sort of roles on on the site are woodland management and caring for the ancient trees that we've got that that are of European importance. And I also get quite involved with the drystone walls and repairing them. I lead a a group of volunteers on a Thursday and as we go across the site, I'm sure I can show you some of the work that we've been doing. Jules: Oh brilliant, and you're going to particularly show us a very special tree, I believe. Matt: Yes, I believe we might be able to find that. Yeah, the tree is approximately 830 years old. It predates the Magna Carta and I'd certainly like to take you to the tree and tell you a bit more about it. Jules: All right. We're just getting ready to go and all around us are people enjoying the park, there are some people walking up hills. There are lots of dogs. There's one very cute little brown dog that's having a little dip in, in a little stream, a little brook, really at the edge of the park and it's already quite a warm day, so I think it's having a nice little cool down. We're back en route towards the special tree with the beautiful drystone wall to our right and across to the left are, well there's a tree, there's a plantation, and then there's also a sort of a bit of a wood pasture environment would you call it Matt, with some native trees dotted around in the landscape? Matt: Yeah, very much so. So this is Hallgates Valley. We're looking across to Dale Spinney. The park itself is 830 acres, of which spinneys represent about 10% of the parkland area, so it's quite a large proportion. All the spinneys were planted on the, on the hilltops across the park, that's that's not just by chance. And they were created around about 1830s-40s by the 6 th early of Stamford and and now we see the spinneys that we've got here today so you've got quite a mature, mature standard trees. Quite a lot are softwood, but then we've got a mixture of hardwoods in there. We certainly replant hardwoods in the spinneys. Jules: How would you define a spinney as opposed to, you know, other kinds of woods? Matt: Nice easy question *laughs*. I would I would say you've obviously got different names of woodlands and you know we're, we're, we're in Charnwood Forest, but a a forest isn't just trees, it's clearings. And I would say a copse is a small woodland. I would say the spinney is is probably like slightly larger than that and then you go up towards a wood. I could be totally wrong! *both laugh* Jules: I like it though. So Matt you say, you've you've been here 20 years. Matt: Yeah, 22. Jules: 22. So you obviously love it. And what is it that keeps you here? Matt: I was born in Leicester and came here as a young child playing and you know to end up working here as a job, it's certainly a nice place to be coming to and huge, beautiful surroundings, fresh air and and then I've I've just got a real passion for particularly the a lot of the heritage crafts that we keep alive on the estate. So yes, we go down and we manage the woodlands, but we're actually carrying out coppicing operations and that, they go back to the Stone Age and and then other work on the site for instance drystone walling, which we're approaching a gap now that we've been repairing and is obviously another heritage craft, and for me, I I just think it's really important that we're passing on these skills, heritage crafts on to the next sort of generation. Jules: That that's brilliant. And do you do you train sort of volunteers or or is it staff members in in this kind of thing? Matt: I've trained up to Level 2 in walling. That's something I I went up to Derbyshire to do. We've actually got another chap on site now, Leon. He's, he was in the armed forces and and and Leon is doing his levels in walling as well. I believe he's already got Level 1 and 2. He's working towards his 3, we might be able to pop and see him in a bit, but I guess the focus should be trees today *laughs*. Jules: Yeah, well if we have time, that'd be great. See how we go. Matt: This is certainly a large gap of wall that we've been doing on the estate. We've got 17 miles of drystone wall to maintain. The deer park itself goes back to 1241, but it's, the boundaries changed slightly over over the years and the largest extent of the deer park was probably around about 1550 and that would have, certain parts of the boundary are drystone wall and and that's obviously what what we're left with today and we need to maintain that. Not only does it keep the deer inside the park, which is obviously beneficial for a deer park, it's fantastic habitat for various, you know, sort of reptiles to live in and adders, grass snakes, things like that. Jules: Fantastic, so we're looking at at one of the drystone walls and it's I'd say about shoulder height, would you say and it's a grey sort of almost sort of slaty looking stone actually, do you, can you tell us what kind of the stone it is? Matt: Yeah so on on this side of the park, it's it's it's it's a little bit more slaty towards Newtown Linford, that's that's more of a granite, the walling that we do on the, that we we do on the park is is called random coursed walling. So yes, as we build the wall up, you start with the larger stones at the bottom and as the as the wall tapers up, it angles in, that's called the batter of the wall, you can see the frame we've got and that that we're working to, we've got the building lines in. So this one is 80 centimetres at the bottom, tapering up to 40 centimetres at the top. Originally this was actually a lime mortar wall and a lot of walls on the park are lime mortar, but it is possible to rebuild dry, but we do a mix a mixture of both on the estate. Jules: That's great and it's just lovely to see these heritage practices being kept alive and you mentioned the coppicing as well, which is absolutely very much part of woodland culture going back centuries. I believe it goes back to the Vikings, maybe even earlier, I don't know if you know anything about the history of it, Matt? Matt: Yeah, well, certainly the Stone Age coppicing going back, going back to the Stone Age, it's the process of cutting the tree down to ground level. Not all trees will coppice, certainly oak will. That's where Copt Oak gets the name from, coppiced oak. Hazel is the primary tree species that we are coppicing, certainly in Swithland Woods and we've got a management plan in place. We've we've just come to the end of a 10-year management plan that was supported by, there's a lady called Liz Sharkey who comes up with a great plan for us. We're just starting in, in November will be the next 10-year plan and the intention of that is to create the most diverse habitat that Swithland Woods is and it will create a mosaic of habitats, different age stands within the structure of the woodland and and part of that will be coppicing rotation and that will open up and the the the floor of the woodland, let light in and that will benefit bluebells and wood anemone and all the related bird species and invertebrates. Jules: This is all music to our Woodland Trust ears. Thank you, Matt. Shall we continue on our little tour? Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will turn this very loud... *banging* Jules: *laughs* I'm not actually sure how to get out the car, but ohh, OK, yeah, yeah. Natasha's on it. Thanks Natasha. OK, so we are walking up to not the tree we're here to see, but we couldn't resist this one because it's really special and it's a gnarly oak tree, kind of growing out of what looks like a big craggy load of rocks. Yeah, Matt, could you tell us a bit more about this tree? Matt: Yes, I can. So it's English oak and some of the, it's growing out of granite and some of the rocks on the park are actually some of the oldest rocks, certainly in Britain and and the world, 560-million-year-old rocks that we've got on the park and it's all part part of the designation, actually, of the park, it's a SSSI, geological interest in the park and also the veteran trees are also part of that designation and we have just become a National Nature Reserve as well, Bradgate Park. Jules: Well, congratulations! Could you just explain the SSSI to us just so people understand what the abbreviation means? Matt: It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest, so there's many layers to Bradgate Park, people might just want to come have a nice walk, enjoy the views, and people that might be more interested in the geology of the park, so we get a lot of people that are coming out and looking at the rocks and looking for fossils and they're able to from that age, the rocks on the park and then other designations that we've got are related to the ancient trees and and that all forms a a bigger picture that makes the park so important that it has to be protected. Jules: Fantastic. And one of the things that I've just noticed on both this very old oak tree and also on the rocks are, there's a lot of lichens. They're gorgeous. So they're sort of just splattered with them, some of them just look like, like, little sort of paint splats, don't they? They are different colours, we've got white ones, green ones on the rocks, I'm looking at, sort of greyish ones. Some are crusty, some are very flat, which is I think the nature of lichens. Do you know much about the lichens? Matt: I certainly know that we need to keep the lichens exposed to the sunlight, so we have to clear bracken so they're not getting shaded out. They take a long time to form and I certainly know that they need good clean air. So that is a good sign, if you're seeing lichens, you're in a good place as a human being. Jules: Yeah, absolutely. And and one of the things about oak trees as well is because they, they're long-lived trees, they provide particularly important habitat for lichens, cause some, many lichens are really, really slow growing, so they need a very slow, you know, stable habitat, so whether it be the rocks or or the very old tree and you'll get different species associated with the different environments as well. Matt: Yeah, exactly right. And and you can see as well as the being lichens on the rock, you look up into the oak tree and in to the, up the, into the crown of the tree and we are seeing lichens on on the oak tree. Jules: Yeah. Aed one of the other things about lichens is that they are also embedded in our culture as well, so we use them to to make dyes, some people cook with them, so again, a bit like bit like the oak trees and and other native trees, they're really entwined in our cultural history. This isn't the tree we're here to see, but it's absolutely marvellous! So I, gosh, I hope this becomes, goes on the Tree of the Year shortlist at some point because it deserves it! Matt: Well, it's nice to have more than one entry. Jules: Yeah, that would be good, wouldn't it? Matt: I guess it would in in increase the chances of winning, but seeing as it's the first time you've come to the park, Jules, I thought you may as well see this. Jules: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love it. It looks quite elephantine from this, elephantine I should say, from this angle with this sort of like this great, long limb sticking out, it's almost like a trunk isn't it and up into the into the blue. Matt: It certainly is, and I think that's certainly going to be the word of the day. I'm not, I'm not certainly going to try and trump that! Jules: OK, yeah, let's, let's, let's try and use it again, in the next stop! *both laugh* OK. We're going back to the car now the the buggy, the T, TVA. No, the, what is it? Matt: The ATV *both laugh* As we go back towards the ATV, we can see a absolutely stunning tower on a hill. It's gorgeous. It's kind of like, well it looks like it's in a fairytale to me. Could you tell us a bit about that? Matt: So Old John Tower was, they started building it 1784 and and it is a folly and it was somewhere that the Greys, the owners, the Earls of Stamford could entertain guests and around the base of the tower, the rear is the remnants of an old racetrack, at the side of the tower, there's an old stable block and the Greys were certainly great horse fanciers and they entered racehorses into various events and along the the the old racetrack there's still remnants of old furlong markers and they were able to entertain the guests, stand up on the the roof of the of the tower and get an idea of of how good the how well the horses were performing. Jules: Brilliant. And and the the Greys being the family of Lady Jane Grey, is that right? Matt: Yes, that's right yeah. Jules: OK. So it's it's absolutely stunning. It looks like the sort of, yeah, if you're drawing a scene in a fairytale, you'd be drawing a little turrety round tower on top of a hill, wouldn't you? And there'd be probably Rapunzel at the top, letting down her hair. On this occasion we've got a, on this occasion we've got a a very fit looking person who's just run a ring around the bottom of the tower and is now running towards us, obviously making use of this wonderful environment to to keep up their fantastic fitness. Right. OK. Now we are going back to the vehicle. And I think is next stop the the tree, our destination? Matt: Yes it certainly is. Jules: OK, OK, brilliant. I think I've actually worked out how to get in this time, which is ohh no, Matt's letting me in, thank you, what a gent, thank you. Right, we are now out of the vehicle and we are walking towards the special tree. And how long, how much of a walk is it from here? Matt: So I can see it already and I'd say we're only about 200 yards away from it. Jules: *laughs* Ohh, I still haven't seen it! Matt: I'm I'm I'm deliberately walking in a way that it's going to appear. Jules: Oh he's hiding it from us. Matt: Yeah. There we go, fallow deer. Jules: Ohh, there's ohh my goodness two fallow deer. The beautiful spotty backs, sort of trotting away. And then they've stopped and have given, they're looking at us. They're not too shy, actually are they? Matt: No, no, they're not. Jules: They look just like double Bambi. They're very beautiful. Matt: You'll you'll you'll notice on all the trees, and there's about a dozen smaller oak trees that we planted, and these are about 30 years old now. Again, you can see how we've we've literally topped the smaller trees and and that's because we don't want to leave these trees just to get huge a. and maidens and straight and tall. So we want these to be stunted and more open grown. And so we've cut the tops off and and thinned them slightly. And then, again, we're hoping that that will make them longer lived. Jules: Yeah, yeah. And of course, the oak trees love a lot of light, don't they? And these have got quite a lot of light and space around them. Matt: Yes. Jules: Ohh, I can see it now. Oh my goodness. What a beast. How fantastic. So it does, so it's the Bradgate Park's oldest oak, isn't it, so does it have a name, another name beyond that? Matt: I think people people give it various names but it's just 'the oldest tree in the park' *laughs* Jules: Yeah, yeah. Matt: Trying, I suppose for many years we've tried to keep it a bit bit sort of secret. That's probably for the benefit of the tree and certainly, the fact that it's within a spinney, people aren't walking up to it, and that's helped the tree. I feel that it's in a, it's obviously found some good growing conditions and despite the general habitat of the park being poor, upland soil, shallow, it's found some incredible growing conditions here it's been sheltered so that it's not being exposed to too much, too much wind force. And also it's it's nice and open so as the, as you know sort of from midday to right through into the evening, it's gonna get plenty of light as well. So there's I think there's been a number of factors that have certainly helped to prolong the life of the tree. Jules: Yes, absolutely. Wow, it is a stunner. So just to try and describe this tree, it it's immensely tall. It's probably about the size of a, what about the height of a house would you say? Matt: Yeah it's a good, good 45 feet. Jules: Yeah. And it's got a very gnarly bole. I call it a bole rather than a trunk because it's really big, broad, and it's kind of split into two, kind of more than two. And it's got some dead branches coming out the middle. It's got one gorgeous, great, long, twisted limb r

Tinuke Oyediran is on a mission to explore all of the UK's temperate rainforests, so for our latest episode, we showed her around magical Bovey Valley Woods in Devon. Tinuke is an adventurer and former professional roller skater, and was a contestant on the BBC's Survivor UK show. She's really passionate about nature, pushing boundaries and sharing her experiences to educate and inspire online communities. As we take a riverside ramble through the rainforest, we hear Tinuke on her wild adventures, the healing powers of nature and her efforts to address the lack of representation in the great outdoors. We also hear about her life-changing experience on Survivor UK, how being outdoors helped her to cope with trauma, past and future adventures and the three Guinness World Records she holds! 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 meeting a professional roller skater, which is a first for me anyway. She was also one of 18 contestants marooned on a deserted location in a BBC reality show which saw people divided into two groups and tasked with competing in a range of challenges in the hope of eventually winning the title of sole survivor. She's meeting me on what I hope to be a less arduous but no less interesting adventure visiting a really, a really very rare sight, a temperate rainforest here in the UK in Devon. Tinuke: Yeah. So my name is Tinuke. I am an adventurer, I'm an online storyteller, triple Guinness World Record holder randomly enough, I'm completely obsessed with being in the outdoors and outside of my comfort zone, so being here in a new temperate rainforest is a great start. Adam: Right. Well, I've I've gotta first of all, you you threw away the line 'a triple Guinness World Record holder'. So I've gotta ask you about that. What what's the three world records you hold? Tinuke: I know. So it's I I used to be a professional roller skater in chapter number one. Adam: Wow. Tinuke: And it's the most cartwheels, the most burpees in a minute on roller skates and then the most spins on the e-roller skates in a minute as well. I did them all in lockdown, so I was just like on a mission. I had time. Adam: OK. And e-roller skates are battery powered are they is that what they are? Tinuke: Yeah, yeah, they're like, they're like a little, like, roller skate segway things that you put on your feet. It's pretty epic. You can go, like, up to 40 miles an hour. It's like proper adrenaline. Adam: Wow. So I mean, I know we're here to talk about forests and the outdoors. Tinuke: We are indeed. Adam: But I have to, I've never met a professional roller skater before, so I just I have to begin with a couple of questions about that. So how how did that come about? Tinuke: So I I used to be in a show called Starlight Express, which is a musical. Adam: Oh yes, of course. Who doesn't know Starlight Express! Tinuke: Literally. Adam: So so but you were a roller skater before that. Tinuke: I wasn't. I was a dancer before that. I I change my mind a lot as you *laughs* Adam: Ah so is that how it works, I often wondered that because they they go through a lot of roller skaters and I thought, that's a limited pool they're fishing in so so they get dancers and teach them how to roller skate. Tinuke: Yeah. Yeah, they train us up and then if you can do the, if you can roller skate by the end of the sort of like training up then you go on to the show. And I did that for two years in Germany and then I came back to the UK and was a professional roller skater for like, 10 years, which was great. Adam: Amazing. Are you still, are you still doing all of that? Tinuke: I do sometimes yeah, I have I have a little cute troop of hula hoop gals who I meet up with every now and then and, like, do some fun jobs with. Yeah. Adam: OK, good. Alright. And I promise not to ask you anymore about roller skating. Right. So you are an adventurer. And I know you are on is that right, a sort of mission to to look at the temperate rainforests and and forests of the UK? Tinuke: I am indeed. Yeah, that among many other missions. So I suppose I could go in how I started, which follows on from the roller skate story, is I went on a show called Survivor on the BBC. Essentially, it's a show where *laughs* they basically just like strip you of all your human rights and desert you on an island and you have to survive in the wilderness out there. So I had a love of the outdoors and forests and woodlands and the wilderness, everything before. But that's what sort of shifted it into making it a bit of a mission to explore. Adam: And how did you how did you do? For those who haven't been following Survivor, which is a massively popular programme, but for those who don't know it, how did you do? Tinuke: I did good. Yeah. Yeah, I did good. It was absolutely brutal in, both physically and emotionally. It's quite it's quite a hard show in terms of like, ohh tactics and things like that. So that was quite tough, but I loved being, living in the wild, building shelters, catching food and yeah, just living out there. That was, that was incredible. Adam: Had you done anything like that before? Tinuke: So I had recently gone and lived out in a a beautiful forest near Stonehenge for a week on my own as you do *laughs* and that was a lot of shelter building and bushcraft skills and all of that, fire making, so I I... Adam: And you just taught yourself this? I mean you just turn up and yeah, I'm gonna sit in the forest now for a week, I better learn how to build a fire or what? *both laugh* Tinuke: Yeah, like some London City babe, just like, where am I? I had done some, like basic skills and and beforehand, so I did know what I was doing. I'd done lots of shelter, building and stuff like that before, but yeah. Adam: And what was, so you said, catching your own food, this is killing animals and eating them, is that? Tinuke: We we, no, we we had, it was I I wasn't, you're not allowed to, I wasn't allowed to catch them and eat them. So I had things with me that I brought in, rabbits and then I forest forage-ed, foraged, foragaged? Foragaged a lot. Adam: Whatever. I know what you mean *both laugh* Very cool. Tinuke: Yeah. Yeah, that was crazy. Adam: And so so that's your background. Lots of different bits to that obviously. And and this latest adventure to sort of travel around the UK an look at forests. Why why that particularly? Tinuke: Yeah. So I first of all, I think it was just online I saw something. This must have been a couple of years ago, something about like UK rainforests and I was just like, what? I had no idea at that point that there were rainforests in the UK and I started off with a rainforest actually not too far from here, which was the first one I went to go visit and and I just started learning all about it. I I do lots of storytelling online and sharing with my community and like educating people about what we can find in the UK. And so that was my first obsession where my rainforest addiction begun and then since then, I've gone up to lots of them in Scotland. Yeah. So yeah, that's where it all kind of began. Adam: So very good. And so it is a, I mean it's it's a surprise I think to most people to be honest that there is a a temperate rainforest in in the UK at all. And it's that in particular which you are looking at on this, you know, adventure, this tour of the UK, not forests in general, it is rainforests. Tinuke: It is rainforests, yeah. Adam: And there's a lot of talk now about the sort of mental wellbeing, and in fact, only a few weeks ago, when the King had some problems with his recurring cancer, he and some other members of royalty I think were talking about the healing powers of being out in nature. So it's sort of a very topical thing. What's your take or experience of that? Tinuke: Yeah. Forest bathing is a thing. I love it. All about sort of bathing your senses and being in the forest, obviously. But my personal journey with nature and healing is a very strong one and is definitely rooted in why I do what I do and why I've chosen this as a career. So when I was about 28, I went through quite a traumatic time where I lost all of my sort of like initial close family. So my cousin, brother, my mum and dad. And I was super young obviously at the time and I started going out into nature as what I thought was like a way to escape my reality. And I went on lots of crazy adventures, hiking, going into the Grand Canyon, going hiking around Iceland. And it was sort of what I thought was a way to get away from everything. But it just became my biggest healing tool ever, and I have recently liked to call it adventure therapy or adventure healing and and it's all about putting yourself out of your comfort zone, being somewhere where you're not normally are, going out into nature forest bathing, hiking, breathing, experiencing aura of nature, looking at an unbelievably tall tree or, you know, a huge beautiful valley like the one that we're in today. Adam: And and it's interesting so you, I mean, you were a dancer and and a roller skater, so you're obviously a physical person anyway, Tinuke: 100% yeah. Adam: So that was so, but there seems to be a distinction you're making between the sort of exercise you might do as part of your dancing and roller skating, and the sort of exercise that is involved in going to a forest or on a hike or something. Why is that different? Because we talk about exercise and the endorphins anyway, so you get that whether you're in a gym or running in a forest. What's different about being in a forest? Tinuke: So I I do like the idea of moving forwards, so I do lots of processing whilst I'm hiking so there's a there's a thing, if I go on on a little bit of a tangent, it's called it's a therapy called EMDR, where Adam: N? Tinuke: EMDR. Adam: M for mother. EMDR yes. Tinuke: Yeah, where it's all about rapid eye movement. So you might follow your end of your finger and you go left, right, left, right. It's all about combining the left and right hemisphere of your brain whilst you're processing something traumatic and you can also do it whilst you're tapping and you can also do it whilst you're walking so that's what I started to do whilst I was hiking out in nature. Adam: And what does that do so why, why is that helpful? Tinuke: The traumatic memory normally gets stuck in the right hemisphere of the brain because that's where emotions and and all of that is governed and so obviously, feelings of anxiety and all the things that can come with going through something traumatic. So by processing whilst you're stimulating the right and left hemisphere of your brain, walking, looking, tapping, side to side, it just helps blend blend it into one and that's what I that's what that's why I've picked hiking and being outdoors. Adam: Very nice. And you, have you found a difference? Tinuke: Completely, 100%. It's like absolutely changed my life, especially especially obviously since I went through all of that. I like doing something, as you said, I'm a physical person, but I like doing something that's quite hard. I like it to be quite challenging, like a challenging hike or a long one, and then at the end of it, it's just building up that resilience that I'm capable of getting over hard things, I'm capable of being a little bit uncomfortable when it's pouring with rain. I've gone camping, there's loads of midges, blah blah, blah and then it's type two fun, you know? Adam: Right. Type two fun? Tinuke: Type two fun. Adam: I can, never heard of that. Right. That's that's fun with a bit of an obstacle? Tinuke: That, that's that's the type of fun that you get in the outdoors a lot where you might be like, why am I camping in this rainforest and it's pouring with rain. But then afterwards, you're like, wow, what an incredible experience. Adam: It was actually fun, oh good alright. Well we're just coming up to a big, let's go, just try and avoid that. So yeah. OK. So so you have found that to be a real benefit to you. Tinuke: Yeah, it's definitely changed my life and my outlook on things. And also it's it's what I've learned about myself is that I'm capable of pushing through uncomfortable moments, and it's like cold, hard evidence for myself that I'm capable of doing that. So it's definitely been a massive like trauma recovery tool for me, yeah. Adam: That's it's interesting. You also talked right at the beginning of this little walk about how, I think you wanted to demonstrate to your community the benefits of nature and the outside. So, so so for what what community are we talking about, to be in, because we want, everyone is part of lots of different types of communities. So so what community are you talking about? Tinuke: So for me like representation of BIPOC people, people of colour, especially in the UK, mainly city dwellers don't have as much experience with the outdoors so, Adam: So you're talking about, you are talking about lots of different, Tinuke: Yeah Adam: You're not talking about an ethnic community or anything, Tinuke: No no no. Adam: You're you're saying young people, people from different, Tinuke: Yeah. People of colour, people of colour, especially like for me obviously like black women doing adventurous stuff is not normally what we get up to *laughs*. Adam: Is it not? Tinuke: Not, not not in comparison to, Adam: So why, why is that then why do you think that is? Tinuke: Lots of different reasons. Lack of representation in the outdoor scene is a huge thing across like the media, and also just when you come to a rainforest like this or a space, it's very different to be here when you're the only person of colour here, lots of people feel like they are a bit out of place, wouldn't know how to get here, wouldn't know that it was a thing that you could do, wouldn't know the benefits of it and and also it's if it if your if your peers and your family don't, don't go and spend much time in nature, you don't have that incentive to or need to know that you can do it. But in recent times it's definitely changing, which is amazing. And there's some incredible groups that are popping up. Black Girls Hike is an incredible one. Adam: Is that the name of the group? Tinuke: That's the name of the group, Black Girls Hike. Yeah. Adam: And that's a a physical group of people, of black girls who go hiking. Tinuke: Yeah, kayaking, camping, all sorts of things. And it's yeah, specifically for people of colour to like understand what it is and how amazing it is to be out here. I went on a camping trip with them last year. It was like 80 women or most of most of them it was all their first camping trip and and that was amazing. Adam: And what about age then as well? Because I was struck by how younger people are very to my mind, very politically engaged with the environment, but less actually engaged, so they, it tends to be older people, in my experience who are part of the environmental charities, I mean, I suppose first of all, do you think that's right or am I wrong in your view or, and so what what do you know about the engagement of of younger people, of all colours and and sex and gender, of of people of your age group. Do they tend to talk about the environment? Is that a a dull subject to them? Tinuke: No no, it's it's not a dull subject. It's a big subject. Obviously this is our reality and it's gonna be the reality of our children and our children's children and much more than it would be for someone older. So it is a big topic of conversation, especially the world that I'm in at the moment, meeting so many people who love the outdoors. It's definitely a subject that is brought up a lot, definitely, and it's it's definitely a thing of why I started the rainforests and going around the temperate rainforest because they're so endangered and it is a massive topic of conversation. Adam: And and are people optimistic about it or are they, is it is it all disaster prone. I I I fear sometimes that the environmental lobby talks so much about the problems it's a bit of a turn off to be honest. But you've been talking very positively about the role of it all. Tinuke: So I suppose I'm trying to put a positive switch on it by talking about it a lot and promoting everything that I do online. For example, I just went to Kilimanjaro two weeks ago and that was the whole reason I went there was because in a couple of years, well in, there won't be a glacier at the top of it anymore. The snow would have melted. So I was on a mission to do it before the glacier had melted and I talk a lot about it whilst I'm doing it. And suffering a lot actually up there. Adam Adam: Suffering from the cold and the, Tinuke: And the altitude and everything. Adam: How how high is Kilimanjaro? Tinuke: It was like three, 3,870 something metres. Adam: Right, and and you walked up. Tinuke: I did, very, very slowly *laughs*. Adam: I was going to say, how long did it take you to get there? Tinuke: It took me seven days to get there and down. Yeah, it was a little bit mad. Adam: With a group, or? Tinuke: With a group, yeah. And I got a chest infection on day two. Adam: Oh wow. Tinuke: It was it was like one of the hardest things I've ever done. And that's when you're like, yeah. Adam: That's type two fun, isn't it? Tinuke: That is type two fun *both laugh* Adam: Sorry I have paused because we are right by a beautiful bridge. Isn't that lovely? Doesn't that look like a a sort of something Tinuke: Like the Hobbit Adam: It does, you know what it does, like a Hobbit right out of Hollywood. Tinuke: Or like there'll be a troll underneath. Adam: Yeah. Who knows? Maybe there is a troll and we need to answer a a riddle before we cross. Yeah, let's take a photo here. But it's a good point because I think you're massive on social media, so we'll take a photo here. Maybe you'll put it on social media, but what are your social media tags? And if people want to follow you? Tinuke: So it's Tinuke, which is T-I-N-U-K-E underscore Oyediran, O-Y-E-D-I-R-A-N. And that's all over the place. Adam: It's all over, on all platforms. Tinuke: On all of them, it's the same. Adam: You're you're you're everywhere. Right. Let's take a photo. Tinuke: Yeah. Adam: OK, right. Well, let's go over the troll bridge. Oops OK there we are. Tinuke: We're not going to go for a wild swim? Adam: Well, I'm very happy to to Tinuke: To not *laughs* Adam: To to try and find a towel for you on your exit, but I won't. Tinuke: You can cheer me, cheer me on but not take part, partake Adam: Yeah, I'm a, I'm a supporter of your wild swim as opposed to a participant. Tinuke: Fair enough. Adam: I would like to stand in the middle of that river. I'm not going to because I don't know what I'm doing. Anyway so you, you've got we talked about the adventures you've done on TV and elsewhere. You've got some other adventures coming up. What are they? Tinuke: I do. I do indeed. I have some lots of UK hikes coming up, which you can always join me on. You can follow me on my Instagram and come, Adam: When you say join you and you mean not just turn up and sort of follow behind you in a sort of creepy manner. This is an organised this is an organised thing. Tinuke: No *laughs* yeah yeah organised hikes Adam: Fine. OK organised. I thought, just go, oh look there she is, just follow her *both laugh* Tinuke: Join me, join me. I'm also going to Iceland, which I'm inviting everyone to come along with me. That's in October, I'm going doing the Annapurna Trail in Nepal, sort of around around Everest. I'm doing that in November, also inviting everyone to join me. And then my big birthday party next year is going to be to Everest Base Camp, which is April next year. So you've got a whole

Our latest episode comes from a rather unexpected venue: a former Chelsea Flower Show garden! Now located in London's Notting Hill, it's where we meet Danny Clarke, garden designer, TV presenter, and self-confessed tree hugger. As we explore the public woodland-themed garden, Danny explains how it tells the stories of injustice against humans and nature. He created the garden as part of his work with Grow2Know, a charity dedicated to making nature more appealing and accessible to a wider audience. It's a subject close to his heart and as he tells us about his childhood and the meaning behind his moniker, The Black Gardener, his passion is clear. Danny finds comfort and joy in nature: the sound of birdsong, the smell of tree bark, the texture of soil. And he's doing his utmost to help as many people as possible, regardless of background, to find that joy 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: Well, today I'm off to meet someone much closer to home than normal. I can do it on the tube rather than going on the train. I am meeting Danny Clarke, who is a British garden designer who shot to fame in 2015 as BBC's Instant Gardener. Since then, he's been on our screens with a host of popular garden makeover shows and horticultural advice. He joined ITV's This Morning's presenting team, and he is now a member of Alan Titchmarsh's Love Your Garden team as well. In fact, in addition to all of that, he helps run a charity known as Grow2Know which, whose heart I think really lies in reclaiming space and reconnecting people with nature and each other. And it's one of those projects I think I'm going to see him at really very centrally, in London, in Notting Hill, where they have tried to bring some green space, some nature right to the heart of the city, and include all the local communities. Danny: My name is Danny Clarke. I'm a garden designer and TV presenter. Adam: Lovely. And we are meeting in what is now fashionable Notting Hill, wasn't always the case when I was growing up around this area, actually, so, but but we're we're in an urban garden that is your design. Danny: Well, not the whole garden, not the whole space. I mean, this is Tavistock Square. Yeah, uh, but we've, um, kind of elicited a section of it to rehome our Chelsea Flower Show garden from 2022, which is which actually is a Grow2Know project, of which of which I'm a director of. Adam: So I what wanna know about Grow2Know. But you you've already mentioned the garden and we're standing right by it. So. Well, why don't you describe it to begin with. So people get a sort of visual image of what it is we're standing next to. Danny: OK, so basically your corten steel structure, it's dominated by a corten steel structure. And that's supposed to represent two things, a) the mangrove restaurant, which was a place that was owned by a West Indian immigrant in the late 60s/70s that was brutalised by the police. And so it's telling that story. And it's also telling the story of man's injustice to nature. So what we see here really is a corten steel structure, which represents the roots of a mangrove tree. And as you can see, it looks quite brutal and and and the top where the trunk is, it's actually been severed, which actually represents what, you know, man's kind of lack of, shall we say, I don't know, respect for nature. Adam: So it's it's a political, I mean, it's an interesting installation, if that's the right word, in that it's it is political in this with this sort of small P, not party political, but it's sort of reflecting the societal challenges that this area certainly went through. But you it's interesting, you talk about the trunk, is it is it also a tree? I mean this is a sort of tree podcast. Is there a reference in that as well? Danny: Yeah, that's a reference to the tree, so that the reference to the tree is that it is a mangrove tree alright, so mangrove and mangrove restaurant. Yeah, so it's kind of a play on words, if you like. So we're telling it's really about storytelling. So we're telling two stories here. We're telling the story of man's brutality against man and man's brutality against nature. Adam: Wonderful. So you run this organisation? What's it called again? Danny: It's called Grow2Know. I don't actually run it, I'm a director, so I'm I'm I'm it's so it started well, it started soon after the Grenfell fire in 2017. Adam: Which is also I mean this is not far from here as well. Danny: It's not far from here. It's just up the road. And I was horrified by what unfolded like many people were. And I felt quite powerless. So I thought, you know what I'll do? I'll get in touch with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where the tower resides and see if I could help in some way, maybe use my expertise as a garden designer to maybe build a small, I don't know, small garden and I spoke to our head of greening guy called Terry Oliver. There's lots of emails flying backwards and forwards. And he was eulogising about this young man called Tayshan Hayden-Smith, 19, single father and who lives near the tower who knew people who perished in the flames. And he turned to gardening or guerilla gardening. I don't know if you know what that is? It's gardening without permission. Adam: Well, yeah. A friend of mine does that actually near where I live, and sort of grows plants, actually vegetables and potatoes in the street trees. I'm I'm going I don't wanna eat your potatoes! But anyway, I get it. It's an interesting sort of little subculture, guerilla gardening. Danny: He was just drawn to it. I think it's probably because his mum used to was into nature when Tayshan was very young and she used to point things out to him. Like, look at that tree, isn't that wonderful? Look at that sunset, isn't it lovely? And this, this kind of instilled into his sort of consciousness. And he just naturally just felt he needed to just go out and find a piece of land, community space, pick up litter, syringes, maybe go to the garden centre, get some fading plants and just pretty the place up as best he could, and he got a lot of healing from that and people will be attracted to him. So there'll be this conversation going on. Sometimes people will stay for a minute, then go off again. Others will probably stay and help him along the way. You know? You know, to to transform the space as best they could. And he got a lot of healing from that. Adam: And and and you, you and your colleagues sort of created this charity around. Danny: So so no, no. So o what then happened was that I... he wanted to know if I'd like to meet this guy, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, I've been meeting a guy that's got all sorts of issues that I might not be able to deal with. But I had this outline of him, and when I met him, there was none of that. He's the most amazing, well-put-together, guy – young man – I've ever met really. And I, cut a long story short, became his mentor, and we've just been on this fabulous journey ever since. And this is part of it. So one day, Tayshan said to me, he'd like to form a nonprofit. We didn't have a name for it at the time, but it did become Grow2Know, and and he wanted to show the wider, more people wanted to make it nature more inclusive, and he because he got so many benefits from it, he wanted the other people to enjoy, you know, the curative effects of gardening and being in nature – cause we all know it's good for the mind, body and soul. So that's how Grow2Know was born. But we've actually sort of gone on from that now. We're more than just a a gardening collective. We're more pace-making, change making. We're out there to sort of change the narrative, if you like. And we're kind of an activist group and we're just trying to make nature more appealing to a wider audience. Adam: And how how are you doing that? I mean, you've clearly got this garden here. But in trying to sort of bring urban communities closer to nature, how are you doing that? Danny: Yeah. Bring, bring, bring communities closer to nature. Adam: And how do you do that? Danny: By having spaces like this. So we've got spaces, quite a few spaces that we've converted in this area and this is just one of them. So it's about bringing people into nature and making it more diverse and more accessible. And in many ways, that's what we're about. Adam: And so I'm interested in in your view about urban communities, youth communities, diverse communities. Danny: That we're all drawn to nature. You know, we, we we all needed part of it in our lives. That's what lockdown taught us, that it was very important for us. Adam: So it's not a challenge for you to bring them into your world. You think they're already there? Danny: No, the people are already there. It's it's just giving them access to these spaces. I mean, for example, excuse me, in the north of Kensington where, let's say it's less affluent than the South, people have the equivalent of one car parking space of nature or greenery that they can access. In the South, which is a lot richer by the river, you know, you've got the like, well, the Chelsea Flower Show is actually by the Thames River, and where people like Simon Cowell and David Beckham have properties, so you get an idea. Adam: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Danny: We all know how wealthy that area is. They've got on average half a football pitch of nature they can access, or greenery. So that tells its own story and and the life expectancy between the people in the north of the borough and the south of the borough, there's a 15 year difference, so you're expected to live 15 years longer if you live in the south than you are in the north. Adam: It is and I hadn't thought of that before you said that, but it is an interesting part of London, this, because Kensington has this sort of reputation of being very posh and everything and the David Beckhams and the what have you. But it is a very divided sort of part of London, isn't it? With the very rich and really the quite quite poor and disadvantaged as well, all within the same borough. Danny: It is, there's a big difference and I think you'll probably find it's the biggest, there's a bigger disparity here than any other borough in in the country. Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. So also, oh, well, why don't we have a walk? We'll walk through through your garden whilst we're talking about this. So also just tell me a bit about, so we we you you very eloquently describe the the the metal sculpture we're we're sort of walking under now, but a bit, the planting as well. So you've got sort of beds of bark here which make it look very nice. Danny: Yeah. So we're we're kind of going with the woodland theme cause as you can see there's lots of trees around here, cause I'm I am a bit of a tree hugger and I love trees. That's my thing. Danny: And we didn't want to, I mean, the, the this garden, although it was our Grow2Know show garden at Chelsea, we haven't actually transformed it in that form. It's the planting is completely different because if we did that, it would jar with what's around. So we've gone with the space. So although yeah, it's all good. Adam: It's all quite green and evergreen. Danny: So the actual structure is the same, but that's all that's that's that's similar. Every, everything else is different. And of course we've had to adapt it as well because the garden that we had at Chelsea had ponds. So for health and safety reasons, we couldn't have that here. So we've gone with the woodlandy theme and so there's rhododendrons, there's ferns. Adam: I was gonna say quite a lot of ferns and some also some big stones here as well, which sort of nice, nice bit of sculpture. Danny: Yeah. That that's a bit of a coincidence really, because. Adam: Because they're just there. Danny: These were already here, but believe it or not, we had stones this size in our Chelsea Flower Show garden. We didn't transport them from there to here. These were already here and we've just kind of re- sort of jigged them. Re-placed them. Just to make it all look a bit more appealing. But we actually had these at Chelsea as seats in the central area underneath the structure. But now they're actually sort of dispersed in the beds and they make great features and and having them there actually helps move the eye around the space. Adam: Yeah. So I mean what, ecology and and concerns about the environment. Clearly a a big issue at the moment. What what's your sense about how the people you work with and and talk to feel about that and engage with it? Are you optimistic about that engagement and and what difference that might make? That was that was my phone. I'm sorry, I should have should have put that on silent. Danny: I'm working with amateurs Ruby! Ohh. Adam: Yeah, I know, I know. I know. You know what? When I'm out with the film crew, you have to buy the round of drinks if that, 'whose phone went?' Right, you're buying a round the, yeah, we're we're we're right by the... Danny: Yeah, well, and it's and it ain't cheap. Adam: OK. I'll put it on silent now. That'll teach me. What was I saying? Yeah, so. Yes. I wonder whether you're optimistic about that reengagement? Cause the way you're talking about it is very positive actually. Everything you've said is very positive. Is that I, I want to get a sense of is that because you're a positive guy and you or, you know, you're trying to look on the positive side, or you genuinely feel no, no, this, you know, these communities are engaging and that's a great thing, not just for them. But for nature, because if people support nature, nature's got a sort of pal hasn't it. Danny: Yeah. And I think people are engaging and and do you know what? I mean I'm all for getting young people involved in nature as much as I possibly can. I think that's very, very important. I think we gotta get them out at a a very early age, the earlier the better because then it sort of stays with you for the rest of your life. If you are not sort of involved in it at young age then you're not, you're less likely to be interested in it later on in life. But I think people generally are engaged in nature. They do need a bit of green. Yeah, I think we're naturally drawn to it. I know when we put it, for example, installing this garden here, the amount of people that are coming out and saying what a wonderful job we were doing. And you know this sort of thing is much needed in this space. And it's also by doing this, it's encouraged the cause. This is a council owned area. It's encouraged the council now to reconfigure the whole of this area to sort of give this more of a sense of place. Adam: I mean, it's interesting you say that. I have to say my experience is not that, it's that young people I meet and I don't meet as many as probably you do, so I will accept that maybe you have a more expert view on this. But my experience is that younger people are engaged with the politics of nature like they're very into green politics maybe and talk about it, but you don't see them a lot in the woodlands. Danny: Oh, absolutely. Adam: It's actually older people I see in the woodlands and it's the young people are sort of politically going, yeah, yeah, that's cool. But actually, I don't see them at these sort of events and they might grow into that. But so is that I I'm just wondering whether you recognise that or you think no, no, that's not what you see. They are actually out there and I'm just seeing, you know, a sort of different view. Danny: I think I think they are. I think they are out there. Obviously there are a lot of young people aren't kind of, don't, aren't as engaged with nature as say I was when I I was a lot younger. I mean you don't see them outside sort of playing around, kicking the ball, climbing trees like we would do, going off of bike rides into the fields. Adam: Are you a country boy, then are you? Or you grew up in town? Danny: No. In fact, my my childhood was very I I moved around a lot cause my dad was in the army. So lived in Belgium, Germany, Malta, all those sort of places. But we were never encouraged to be indoors. We were always thrown outside. I mean, I remember even at the age of 8 or 9 just disappearing for all day. My parents would never know where I was. But you know, I'd I always came home. I never came to any harm. But I think these days I think parents are kind of very worried that that something might nefarious might happen to their children and and the kids aren't given the freedom that we were given, which is a shame. So they're not exposed to nature as much on their own. I mean, I do see kids going around with their parents on walks and stuff like that, but it's not quite the same as being able to explore on your own. You know, children naturally want to sort of push the boundaries. We really need to let kids do their own thing, explore more. It's a growing experience and you know, and we all need it. We all need to be out and about and you know, listen to the tweet, I mean, tweeting of the birds, you know, feeling, feeling the wind on our on our faces, the warmth of the sun on our skin, all those things that you know, just feeling the texture of the soil, the texture of the bark on the trees. It's lovely. I love doing that. When I hug a tree, you know. Just to smell the bark. It's lovely. It's comforting. And that's because I was exposed to it when I was a child. And you know it, it gives me those fond memories and and because of that it's it's very calming and and and a great stress-buster. Adam: I follow you on on Instagram. You got a good Instagram following and your Instagram handle, if anyone wants to do that, is? Danny: The Black Gardener Adam: The Black Gardener. So that, which itself is an interesting sort of handle. So you're making, I don't know, is that just a random handle or are you making a point about, oh I am the black gardener. That's that's a statement. Danny: *laughs* Well I am. I am what it says on the tin. Adam: No, no. But look I'm a bald, I'm a bald reporter *laughs*. My handle isn't bald reporter, right? So it feels like you're saying something about that that's important. And I just... Danny: It is it is, it is important. Adam: Unpack that for me. Why is, why did you choose that, why is that connection to gardening, to nature and the lack community and your heritage? Why is that important? Danny: It's important because there are few black people who are in my industry, so that's why I'm The Black Gardener. So I got the idea from a guy called so, The Black Farmer. Adam: Yeah, famous range of sausages. Danny: That's right and I saw that he was having success with his name and the reason he calls himself The Black Farmer, cause at the time he's the only black farmer in the country, so hence The Black Farmer. Black gardeners, professional black gardeners are as rare as hen's teeth. So I thought to myself, why don't I call myself the black gardener? Adam: But why? Why do you think it is then? Cause that goes back to our earlier conversation. About sort of other diverse communities. Danny: It could be some psychological reason, maybe from the days of slavery. Where working the land is seen as servile. Parents don't want their children to be working the land. They want their children to do something respectable like be a doctor or lawyer or something like that, so they tend to veer them away from doing something which is connected to the land, and and I think maybe that could be a reason, I mean I did have a conversation with somebody via Twitter in the States about it, and she said it's the same there. People of colour tend not to want to go into land-based industry. I mean I've I've only ever and this is only about two month

Buckland Wood is no ordinary wood. This is magical temperate rainforest, a rare habitat not just in the UK but in the world. Cloaked in lush lichens and mosses, dotted with stone walls and bridges and with a beautiful river rambling through, it already looks and feels like a special place. But the Trust has big plans for its future. Join us to explore with rainforest guru Sam, who tells us about the bid to restore this globally important site and its huge potential to connect people with nature, store carbon and boost biodiversity. Hear why temperate rainforests are so special, along with pine marten reintroductions, backpacks on beetles and much more! Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland W alks, 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 : For today's woodland walk, we are heading into the rain forest, but I am not going very far . Well, I'm going quite far, but not to the Amazon , o r South America . I'm going to t o the temperate rainforest, which isn't as well known, but is actually even rarer than the tropical rainforest. It's also known as Atlantic or Celtic rainforest. And as I said, exceptionally rare. You do find it on the West Coast of Scotland, North and West Wales, Devon , Cornwall, Cumbria, parts of Northern Ireland, which sounds like a long list , but it really isn't . And what's wonderful actually is that Britain is really the place in the world to find these things. We have a very high proportion of the global area of temperate rainforest. I'm heading to Devon to see some temperate rainforests. Anyway, enough from me. Let's go talk to an expert about Devon ' s t emperate and exciting rainforest. Sam : So I'm Sam Manning. I'm the project officer for the Woodland Trust Rainforest Recovery Project. We are here in Buckland Wood, which is a new Woodland Trust acquisition on Dartmoor in the Dar t Valley. Adam : Fantastic. And it's it's super new because the place we came down didn't seem to have a sign on it or anything. So when did the T rust acquire this? Sam : So we've literally just acquired this this month and it's an extension really of two other sites that we own in the Dar t Valley, Au s e well Wood, which we bought about five years ago and Grey Park W ood, which we've owned f or a couple o f decades. Adam : Right. And and what are we gonna do? Where are you t aking me today ? Sam : So we're going to have a walk around the wood and I'm going to show you some of the aspects of the restoration work that we have planned here , we're going to go down to the Dar t River, which is a really special river. It's 26 miles long. Very, very ecologically biodiverse, very important for , in terms of temperate rainforest, and look at how we can restore that through various different natural flood management methods . Adam : Right. Lead on, Sir. So you already mentioned the keyword temperate rainforest. Is that what this is? Sam : Yeah . So this is sort of prime w hat we call hyper - oceanic temperate rainforest. Adam : You just have to say that slowly. Hypo what? Sam : Hyper - oceanic. Adam: Hyper-oceanic , OK. Sam: Yes. So there's there's two different kinds of temperate rainforest b roadly . T here's southern o ceanic, which is any rainforest woodland that receives over 1 .5 metres of rain fall a year . Adam: Right. Sam : O r hyper - oceanic and that is 1.8 metres of rainfall and above, so slightly t echy and scientific. But what it means is is that you get two distinctly different communities of lichens or lower plants, which is what makes these w oodlands particularly special. Adam : Sorry, I've already forgotten. Are we in the rain type of temperate rainforest that gets more rain or less rain ? Sam: M ore rain . Adam: M ore rain . Sam: Yeah it rains a lot here. Adam: So that's the the non - oceanic one gets more rain. Sam : The h yper -o ceanic gets a lot of rain, yeah . Adam : Hyper -oceanic . OK, so you can see I'm a poor student. OK . So, but luckily extraordinary , I mean, it's a bit there's a c hill , but it's it has been lovely weather and it's definitely dry today. Sam : Hmm yeah , this is t his is quite strange for Dartmoor really , I think this is sort of the driest March in 60 years or something. So we are we are beginning to experience much, much drier springs and summers, but one of the functions of these rainforests is they are very, very good at producing their own rain and and in 2020, during the COVID lockdown, there was a real blue sky dry sort of drought level day in that March - April period. And I remember walking through this valley in the middle of the day and there was a thunderstorm and that was occurring nowhere else even in Devon or the wider country. And that's because t hey're effectively these sponges that accumulate a lot of rain in winter, store them, and then produce them more in summer. Adam : Wow. A nd and I mean also we we think of rainforests as basically Brazil I suppose. But but we have temperate rainforests in the UK and my understanding is , I mean, they're extraordinarily rare on a , not just the UK, a global level. Just give us a sense of how special and unusual these environments are. Sam : Yeah , that's right. So they're they're found only on 1% of the earth 's land surface. So they are rarer by area than tropical rainforest. Adam: Right. Do you happen to know? Sorry , a re we going down there? Sam: Down there yeah . Adam: OK, so 1% temperate rainforests. Do you know what tropical rainforests are to give us a sense of proportion? Sam : I actually don't know that, but I suspect it's probably around somewhere between 10 - 15%. Adam : OK, well, I'm not gonna hold you to that *both laugh* but but that gives us a sort of sense of just h ow rare these are and tropical rainforests are fairly rare anyway, but OK . S o these are very, very unusual environments. And w hat are you trying to do here then? Sam : Well, a lot of these temper ate rainforests are ancient w oodlands, but they are plantation s on ancient w oodlands, so they are w oodlands that have existed in perpetuity for as long as records go back. But a lot of them, as you can see here, have been conifer i sed , so they would have been cleared of their native tree species like o ak , to be replaced by non-native timber crops from places like the Pacific Northwest, which which that's also ironically a temperate rainforest landscape, b ut those species are not c o - adapted to the species we have h ere. So you you get these plantations that are very, very unbi odi verse , very dark, very shading and really don't work in tandem with a lot of the light - demanding rainforest species that we have, like rowans , h awthorns , oaks, that kind of thing . O f those sites I've talked about, almost half of it is conifer. Adam : So your your first job, ironically, is to take trees out ? Sam: Well there'll be a sort of two - pronged approach really of using natural processes to diversify the forest, make it more structured, diverse. But we will need to intervene at certain times, particularly if we have really , really rare species . So in Ausewell for example, there's a species of lichen called bacidia subturgidula , so it's got a mad Latin name, Adam: Wow, OK I'm definitely not saying that *laughs* Sam: *laughs* But t hat species, for example, we have a quarter of the entire world's population of that species of lichen in Aus e we ll . Adam : Right in Au s e w e ll , which is quite a small place. S am : Yeah , exactly. That's about 100 hectares, so. .. Adam : And that's a quarter of the global population of this lichen is in that. .. Sam : Of that species , y eah . So when it comes to that, it's really about almost surgically intervening. Adam : That's interesting . Let's let's carry on, you you better lead on , I've no idea where I'm going. So b ut that's interesting because I I can see planting trees , I've never heard of people a ctually planting like them, I didn't think that was even possible. Sam : Yeah . So we call it translocation and and that's really only a last a last sort of nuclear option really when it comes to li chen conservation, if we have a tree where they have a really, really rare for m of , a rare population of a species , then moving that to another tree may be the difference between that going extinct or not . B ut here now we've had this happen , w hat we're going to be doing is seeding it with those rainforest tree spec ies to start to get that regeneration and there's loads over here. Adam : What I'm still not clear about is why is the rainforest so special? It might be , oh i t gets a lot of rain , w ho cares? A place g ets a lot of rain , so does Wales, so doe s a lot of bits of London. It's clearly something special , i t's not the trees , s o what , w hy is having a temperate rainforest actually a good thing , w hat makes it special? Sam : Well, there's there's there's a few different things. One of them is, and this is the real key one we focus on , is the biodiversity value. So the real bad , Britain in general is quite a wildlife poor place. We have quite a low species diversity, but these rainforests are absolute wells of biodiversity globally. The key ones are these epiphytes , s o we're talking about li chens, b ryophytes , s o those are the mosses, liverworts and horn wort s. Britain has over 2 , 000 species of li chen, it's one of the most biodiverse places on Earth in terms of l ichen species, so we're really punching above our weight in terms of biodiversity in that sense, and they're only really found in these temperate rainforest habitats. Adam : And li chen , I love lichen , and it's a real sign of air purity and everything , t hey're beautiful. How much do they support, like wildlife? I 'm not aware of animals feeding off l ichen very much , I don't think it ha s much nutrients in it ? Sam : Not too much at a macro level, but if you were to delve into that microscopic world, they are absolute keystone species in terms of forming the bedrock for so many invertebrates for so much sort of microbes. But they're also functionally , and this is something I'm I'm really passionate about, is looking at these forests in terms of what they can give to us f unction ally and the environment f unctionally, they are really good at fixing nitrogen. They're very, very good at fixing carbon, but but so in terms, that's what that's what makes temperate rainforest really good in terms of climate change mitigation is they hold that water , b ut they also are incredible carbon stores far more carbon is stored in these forests than traditional forests in the UK. Adam : And that's lichens playing a big role in this ? Sam : A huge part, yeah , because of the pure , like the biomass of those lichens and mosses. Adam : Ohh interesting. OK, so where are we going? Sam : So I would quite like to go d own to that river. Adam : I'd love to go down t o the river! Can I just ask , w e're not going that way, are we? ? Sam : No, I think we're gonna , that's one we may drive down, I think . Adam: Drive down there?? No no we're not going to drive down there, that's not possible! * both laugh* Sam: Y eah , we might have to go to a scenic detour around. Adam : OK, well, there let's go down to the river. You have to lea d . You look like .. . Sam : So I think if we head up back to the car, shoot down, yeah . Adam : OK. Ohh I see. OK, OK. But we're not driving down this this hill. Sam : No, no, I think let's go down to the main D art a ctually a nd then you can. .. Adam: OK. And then get and get back, OK. Brilliant. We have come down to the river, remind me what the r iver is called ? Sam: This is the Webburn . Adam: The Webburn , whi ch leads into the D art . We are on proper Hobbit territory now. A m oss - covered stone bridge over the Webburn . W e passed a little a beautiful little cottage , actually t here's a number of b eautiful cottages here . S o explain a bit about where we are . Sam : So we're stood on the W eb burn , the Webburn watercourse and just behind us is the confluence of where it enters the Dar t River and this kind of where it feeds into our aspirations for the restoration of the site. I t' s what many people w ould consider to be quite a natural looking river or n atural looking watercourse. But this really as you can see it's very straight, it's very cut down into into the ground. So we call that incision and that's a product of centuries of draining and of artificial domestication of this watercourse t o allow the land around it to be drier, which makes it more kind of productive for forestry. Adam : So that's not natural? Sam: No. Adam: Are you gonna do anything about that? I feel like a teacher , 'are you going to do anything about that?'! Sam : *laughs* That that is the plan. Adam : How how do you change , I mean , t he river has cut, therefore quite a a deep edge into the land. What would you be able to do to to change t hat then? Sam : Yeah . So a couple of years ago I went out to the Pacifi c Northwest , Canada, Vancouver Island to see their temperate rainforest and have a look at how old growth sort of ancient temperate rainforests function, but also how they restore them. And they , I asked them to take me to a river t hat was their best example of a really healthy rainforest river with really good salmon populations with great biodiversity that would have been unaffected by humans. And they took me to a place called Lost Shoe Creek. And and from the bottom of the watercourse where it entered the sea to the head w aters, it was , you couldn't see the water. It was absolutely cover ed i n wood, so huge trees that had fallen in , trees ba n k to bank , pinned against the bank. And what that does is it creates a much more d ynamic r iver system that doesn't go in a straight line, but also holds back a lot of the gravel with the sediment and the silt that in this kind of river is making its way to the ocean. And causing a lot o f damage. Adam : So it's allowing or maybe placing actual dead trees i nto into the water and we can see one tree ' s already there , presumably t hat just naturally fell in . Sam : That's right. Yeah . So if we left this for 1 , 000 years, it would fill, it would be effectively be a giant log jam, and we'd start to get a lot of that naturalised process happening. And then you get much more biodiversity because there's more invertebrates in the river, there's more shelter for fish and birds , there's more habitat. But what we're effectively planning on doing i s is doing something what people call stage zero restoration, so taking , accelerating that that thousand - year process and taking it back to a more naturalised river. Adam : It's such a a spot. I think it's time for a bit of social media video, so I'll film that and you can see that on the Woodland Trust and my sit e s, and then we'll crack on . Sorry, I know this is really important , but this is an amazing fallen tree over a drystone wall covered in m oss , I mean, I just had to stop for a moment . L ook, you talked about lichen. I know , I ask you a question t hen stop you answering it *both laugh* . I love this li chen , it's all on this tree. It is really, really beautiful. Sam : So this is called sea storm lichen which is one of the few li ch ens that has actually a romantic sort of English name that isn't Latin . Adam : Wow. Well, very cool. Whilst you're talking, I'm gonna take a photo. OK. Yeah , go on , seastorm lichen . Sam : Yeah , and and s o a lot of the lichens will, as you can see, grow on the branches where the light is greater. So there's almost a canopy world of biodiversity up there, and what we're doing by increasing the light levels is, is drawing these lichens down to the forest floor by increasing the light levels. But this is a really, really good example of the k i nd of levels of de adwood we actually want to aspire to . S o i n , as you can see, in most of the forest, it 's c ompletely denuded of d eadwood. So w e 'd b e lucky if we ge t s ort of 5 cubic m e tres o f wood per hectare . I n the forest of , the temperate rainforests of Canada , t hey have sort of 600 cubic me tres a hectare of d eadwood. So y ou yo u c ould barely even move through th eir fores t. Adam : A nd that's super , because often people want the d eadwood cleared cause you go , 'o h well it's untidy ' , but that's a sort of o asis of of biodiversity. Sam : That's right. It's a whole layer of ecology that we're missing from our forest s . And we recently did a study on something called the b lue g round b eetle, which is a an endemic rare species to temperate rain forests . We didn't know where they went in the day, so we didn't really know anything about them, t hey're very elusive. They come out at night, walk up the trees, and they reflect the moon off of their blue, kind of shiny carapace . They're our biggest bee tle . So we did a study with Exeter University where we put GPS tracking backpacks on t hem . Adam: O n a beetle ? Sam: On a beetle, to find out where they went . And l o and behold, we found that they were going into these d eadwood habitats and so it just it just shone a light on how important increasing d eadwood in these forests is for all of those species. Adam : Amazing. All right. I I do encourage you to follow the W oodland T rust ' s social media, I nsta and all the rest of them and my B luesky and Twitter or X or whatever it is you wanna do. And I'm now gonna take a photo which hopefully you'll see on any of that social media. So do follow them all. And we 're going to take a pause as I pose *laughs* . Right, I'm back from my photographic expedition. Right. S o you can answer the question again now about this public debate about access and and what have you . Go on, y ou lead on wh ilst we're talking. Sam : So yeah , Dartmoor is really kind of the centre of gravity for a wider story around public , a n increasing demand from the public to access land for wellbeing, recreation, connection to nature , t hat ha s been kind of growing here, particularly in this area. Adam : Right. Sam : There are, I think we actually sorry , we do need to go that way, I think they've blocked the path . Adam : OK fair enough. Sam: We're not having to scramble. Adam: And I think we're going back to where we came from . Alright . Although that path there looks blocked. Sam: This one looks good. Yeah . Adam : Oh OK. Sam: Go t hrough this end . Adam: T hrough the little stone wall. OK. R ub y' s following doing social media. Ohh OK. Yeah , sorry, carry on . Sam : S o, I suppose the concern of some people might be that increasing foot f all , public access to these really important fragments of temperate rainforest, it could have a damaging effect on the biodiversity here. But the reality is that in order for people to connect with , understand and care about nature, they need to have access to it. And so w e need to bring people into these habitats in a sensitive and considered way to educate people about them, but the other key thing is we need to expand these habitats . S o we're part of something called the South W est Rainforest Alliance. And our goal collectively is to increase the amount of temperate rainforest in Devon and Cornwall , to triple it by 2050 . Adam : OK. I mean that's worth pausing on that for a moment. That's an extraordinary task. I mean it sounds a bit , I have to say I'm a bit sceptical about that , it s ounds like you plucked that out the air . How on earth would you get t o t ripling the cover you've got? Sam : Well, we think we can do that mostly through buffering existing temp orate rainforest, s o planting around them which can then make those bigger, better, more connected, but also just by introducing trees into farm ed landscapes but not in a way that damages t

Spring is in the air! Join us at Londonthorpe Wood, Lincolnshire to enjoy the wellbeing benefits of woods while using all our senses to check for signs of spring. We seek out frogspawn, song thrushes and blackthorn blossom for Nature's Calendar, a citizen science phenology project which tracks the effects of weather and climate change on nature across the UK. Keeping your eyes and ears peeled to record for Nature's Calendar doesn't just support science. Discover new research that shows how engaging all our senses on a woodland walk is good for our wellbeing, and how different levels of biodiversity in each wood can impact the positive effects of being in nature . 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, this month I'm off to Grantham in Lincolnshire, which is a bit to the right of Nottingham and quite a bit below Sheffield, if you're not clear on your geography. Anyway, I'm here to investigate a Woodland Trust project called Nature's Calendar, which tracks how the seasons are changing over time and if, for instance, the timing of spring is starting earlier. Now, if that is happening, that's not a minor thing, because all of nature depends on, well, the rest of all of nature. So if one thing changes, it can cause big changes everywhere. Now, this is all part of citizen science, and if you don't know that phrase or haven't heard it before, it means the data is collected from people of all ages, backgrounds, abilities, not necessarily by scientists, in fact, probably not by scientists. Anyone can volunteer and the volunteering work is incredibly important. Volunteers have been recording the changing seasons with Nature's Calendar for 20 years, and the database they have built contains 2.9 million records. It's believed to be the longest written biological record of its kind in the UK, and it's used by researchers from across the world to explore the effects of weather and climate on timings in wildlife. And a brief word for those who like new words, here's one for you: phenology. That's what this project is all about. The study of seasonal changes in plants and animals from year to year. Phenology. Now, that word was invented by a botanist called Charles Morren in around 1849. But even before they had a name for it, people were busy recording what was happening in nature and Britain was really at the forefront of much of this work. Robert Marsham was Britain's first phenologist, doing his work before the name was invented for his field of study, and he recorded his quote 'indications of spring' from around the year 1736. Anyway, all of that is a huge historical meander so let's get to the events of today with a real meander around Londonthorpe Woods with one of the Woodland Trust's experts. Here we are. Whenever you're ready! Sally: Okay, I'm Sally Bavin. I'm a monitoring and evaluation adviser for the Woodland Trust and we are currently at Londonthorpe Woods, near Grantham. Adam: Right, well, thank you very much for joining me here. It's a chilly day, but we're good on the, we're good on the rain for the moment. So what is the purpose of what we're doing here? Where are you taking me today and why? Sally: We've we've come out to the woods today to enjoy some of the wellbeing benefits of visiting woodlands and particularly looking out for signs of spring using all of our senses. So, yeah, it should be quite a quite an enjoyable one. Adam: Fantastic. And this fits in with part of a campaign the Woodland Trust is running. Is that right? Sally: Absolutely, yes, so we have at the moment we're asking people to look out for the vital signs of spring, as we're calling it. So we've picked out three things of interest that are frogspawn, the song of the song thrush returning for the spring, and the first blackthorn flower. Adam: Right. And that's what we're going to try and spot today. Sally: We will have a go. Yeah, we might be a bit early for some, but this is the the interesting thing to see what's out and about at the moment. Adam: And on a previous podcast we were here together looking to sort of identify trees. I'm going to be super impressed if you can identify birdsong as well. Are you good at that? Sally: Well, I know the song thrush. That's the one we're listening out for *laughs* so I'm not too bad. You'll have to test me as we go along. Adam: Okay, so we're at Londonthorpe Woods, which is, happens to be near Grantham, which is where the Woodland Trust is actually based. So all very lovely. Which way? Sally: I assume we're editing lots of… Adam: No, no, no, all this confusion is, is in *both laugh*. That way. Sally: Okay. Adam: Right. If you're hearing noises off, it's because Alex from the Trust is joining us. She's part of the brains of the operation and also doing social media videos. So I'm gonna look particularly daft with my, headset on, talking into a little box. Anyway, so, okay well, we're already leaving the woodlands. That was a quick visit. We're crossing the road. Is it because there's a pond over here? Sally: Yes. So the first thing we're going to look for, is frogspawn. And as we are walking towards the pond, I could tell you about some research that the Woodland Trust has funded, but let's wait till we get away from the road. Adam: I was gonna say we just crossed not a very busy road that got very busy as we were crossing it. Okay, let's go through here, away from the road and into another bit of woodland. Sally: So I think to get to the pond, I think it's that way. And then that way. Adam: Okay, you're not filling me with confidence. You've only taken two directions, and you're not sure of either of them at the moment, but okay *both laugh* Sally: Yeah. So as we're walking along, the idea is to be using all of your senses to engage with the landscape that we're in. So I've just seen a robin fly past there, but, yeah so… Adam: But robins aren't a sign of spring? Sally: They sing all year round, they're a good constant through the winter. Thank goodness for the robin otherwise we wouldn't really have much birdsong in the winter at all. Adam: And they look lovely, robins, but actually they're they're quite territorial, they've, a lot of them come to my bird feeder in my garden and they're, they're proper brave! I mean, I'll go out and the robin looks at me like, come on, get the nuts out, get the seed, they're not scared. They're quite territorial, looks like quite territorial birds, I think. But go on, you you were wanting to tell me? Sally: So one of the birds that we're listening for is the song thrush. That is because, it's a bird, which generally, it starts singing early spring, and it's a species that's been recorded for Nature's Calendar for many years now. So it's one that we're asking people to look out, to listen out for even, engaging all your senses, because it's quite a distinctive song, so if we do hear one, then that would be great. Adam: And then where do they go then, in the winter, then, migratory, migratory, oh, gosh, I can't even say that word properly. But anyway, they're not always here, perhaps is a better way to describe them. Sally: We do have resident song thrush, but it's the singing behavior that starts in the spring. Adam: Oh does it? And is that all about attracting, you know, mates? Sally: Yeah, yeah, it's the the springtime rush for romance, yeah. Adam: Right okay and is it the boys or the girls doing the singing? Or is it both? Sally: I believe it's the males, but, yeah, I'll have to check that one. Adam: Okay. I'll check. Sally: It's usually the males. Adam: Is it? Okay. Sally: But the robins are the exception where females and males both sing. Adam: Actually, do you know what? I've got such a bad memory, but I, we came here, and I remember stopping at this tree because I think you were explaining to me, was it, a little, I've forgotten the name, but the things that you crush up and make ink with that Shakespeare used to write in. Sally: Ah, oak galls. Adam: Oak galls! Oak galls. And I think they were around here. No, this is not an oak? Sally: No… Adam: Okay. But this is, that's right, I think oak galls, which was a great little episode all about, and I've got one on my desk still from this woodland. Sally: Oh, you've not used it for writing yet? Adam: I haven't ground it up to try and make ink, no. Anyway, sorry, I was interrupting. So yes so so the birds don't leave us, but they do start singing, right? A very muddy bit. Sally: Very muddy. Adam: Okay, you might hear some squelching. Oh, blimey. Sally: So that's some good sensory experience there as well all the squelchy mud. Adam: Okay, so tell me a bit about, this woodland that we're in whilst we're going up to find the pond. Sally: So this is Londonthorpe Wood. It's the closest woodland to our Grantham head office, which is lovely. It was it's a woodland creation site, but it's getting, on I think it's roughly about 30 years, probably since it was planted now. So, it's really, you know, well established now, we can start to see lots of different types of habitats. We've got some glades, which is open areas within the woodland, with some nice grassland habitat. There's some dense areas, like these sort of thickets of blackthorn, which we could be checking for blossom. I can't actually see any at the moment yet. I think we're perhaps a bit too too early. Adam: Well, we're going just off the beaten track a bit here into a lovely pond area where, oh, it's it's actually, this is an outdoor classroom it says, so we'll go through this gate and walking up here, there's a good sized pond and a platform, I've lost the word, a wooden platform so you can sort of stand out a bit and it's here that we're hoping to see frogspawn, one of the early signs of spring, even though it's a bit chilly today. So we'll have a, yeah, I'm already getting a shake of the head so okay. Which is a shame, because it looks like there are no frogspawn here at the moment. So one of the early signs of spring is not here. But I suppose just the absence of that spring, is itself interesting, I mean, and in itself, one observation, of course, isn't scientifically significant, but actually, I think what is perhaps really important is that, global warming, changing seasons aren't linear. So we're also getting we may be getting an early spring, but also we're getting more volatile periods perhaps. So it's just up and down. And perhaps that's what we're seeing anyway. No, no frogspawn today. Let's move on. Sally: It's an unusually hilly wood for Lincolnshire. Adam: Yeah. Oh, right. Is Lincolnshire, meant to be fairly flat? Sally: A lot of it's flat, yeah, but Grantham is on this, sort of geological feature called the Lincoln Edge, and it's sort of one big long hill that runs through the county, sort of south to north. And we just happened to be, have found it to climb. Adam: Right. So what is the purpose of this then? Presumably it's partly scientific because you're getting data from a from a lot of people around the country. Is it something else apart from that? Sally: Nature's Calendar as a project? Yeah, so, like you say, it's it's primarily it was set up to be a phenology project. So studying how the changing climate is affecting the changing seasonal events and affecting what time of year they occur. But it's also a really good opportunity for, because obviously it's volunteers that, you know, look out for these things and we need eyes and ears all over the country looking out for these things, and something that you get back from it as a volunteer, is that opportunity to have that bit of extra motivation to keep your eyes and ears out, looking at nature regularly, and with a sense of purpose to do that, which I think is a really good opportunity for people to, to help their own wellbeing. So it just kind of really fits well with what we know from research is, the way to get the most out of time in nature, which is using your senses to engage with it, finding meaning in it, and connecting with other people around it as well. So you become part of this, you know, community of people contributing and giving back as well. So you're providing your data that's, you know, an opportunity for you to, to contribute to something bigger than yourself and to, to have that sense of purpose, with what you're doing. So it just brings it more, yeah, it brings it alive for people, I think, because a walk in the woods, if you're not necessarily engaging with your surroundings, you could miss a lot of the beneficial species that that research showed when people engage with them, they really benefit from. Adam: Brilliant. Sally: I, I, one thing, oh, shall we sit on this log, that'd be a nice little, I mean, it looks a bit prickly around it, but nice to just sit and chat because we've had a lot of hills! Adam: It does have a lot of, yeah, we have had a lot of hills. Sally: So the research that the Woodland Trust funded, I just wanted to talk about what we're hoping to actually do with these findings and sort of why it's all important. So, the mapping that the researchers at the University of Kent have done, to identify those hotspots of, where woodlands are really rich in biodiversity and the biodiversity that people relate to for wellbeing experiences, it really it fits in with the Woodland Trust's focus on being really interested and driven to improve the quality of woodlands rather than just the quantity. So while we do need to increase woodland cover, as you know, just pure hectarage, we need more woodlands, it's really about the quality of those woodlands that we're creating and protecting and restoring woodlands that we already have. So this research really shows how it's important for people that the quality of woodlands is there. Just it just shows how important things like our new woodland creation guide are, which, set out guidelines for how to create a new woodland in a way that's most likely to help it develop into a woodland that's going to be thriving with wildlife in the future. Adam: And what sort of person gets that guide, is that just for professional sort of people who are setting up massive woodlands across the country, or is it something you you might be able to do as a community project or if you've got a large bit of land yourself? Sally: Yeah so it's available on our website so anybody can download it and it's aimed at anybody who's creating a woodland so the principles can be taken on board and scaled up or down to whatever's necessary. So, yeah, that's available on our website. Adam: And, and in the time that, that this Nature's Calendar has been running, have you noticed any differences? Sally: I've been with the Woodland Trust for five years, and so I've been recording frogspawn as my main… Adam: That's your, that's your go to. Sally: Yeah and I like it because it's very, well it's literally black and white *laughs*. You can, it's there or it's not there, one day it's there. So… Adam: And what, have you noticed anything in that time? Sally: Yeah, in my, I mean, a five year span, I suppose there's, there's quite variation and this is obviously just my one record, so it's anecdotal but but there are analysis provided on the website of all the woodlands, the, the Nature's Calendar data and yeah, so I think the first time I recorded it was about 10 March, something like that. And in some years I've recorded it as early as Valentine's Day so that's already past now so this year is obviously a later one. So you know, it, it shows that there is that, the the data from Nature's Calendar is part of it contributes to the State of UK Climate report and the JNCC Spring Index, which is the kind of, the measure that they use to look at the effect of climate change on biodiversity. Adam: Sorry what's the JNCC? Sally: JNCC is the… Joint Nature Conservation Council. That's probably, that might be wrong! Adam: Maybe, something like that. We don't guarantee that by the way, if you're listening, it's just what we think. Anyway, okay, the JNCC…*both laugh* Sally: It's a sort of government organisation. Adam: Doesn't matter, I'm sure they're very important. Anyway, the JNCC, I interrupted your your train of thought. The JNCC says what? Sally: The spring index has moved forwards by more than eight days over I think it's the last 30 years, I think is the data that they use. Adam: And is that a lot? Is that significant? I'm not sure? Sally: It's it's significant when you think that birds will time their nesting, to within a peak kind of abundance of caterpillars, which are all also dependent on the phenology of leaves emerging. Adam: And an eight day difference makes a difference? Sally: So yes, yes, studies of birds like blue tits, which we've said are, you know, so important for people's wellbeing to be able to see birds like that around, yeah studies have shown that they do suffer in years where, the, the leaves burst too early. That means the caterpillars come out too early, and then they are not in sync with that, pattern for when they're, raising their chicks in the nest because they need a huge amount of food to be able to raise to, to raise a clutch of, of chicks. And they do it over a spell of just, you know, 2 or 3 weeks. So a week is a big difference when you think that that's... Adam: Right so that makes it, okay, that's it in context. So they're they're really peak feeding for these young chicks is 2 or 3 weeks. So if, if spring is moving eight days that's over half your feeding time to get a sort of young chick away and stable, is actually there's no food. That's the difference between living and not living, presumably that's a big deal? Sally: Yep, yeah, exactly. And you know, the sort of potential knock on consequences of food chains being disrupted could go much beyond there but I think there's a lot more that we don't know yet. And that's probably just as concerning as what we do know. Adam: Okay, yeah, I didn't, I have to say when you say eight days over 30 years, I went, well, I don't know, how significant is that. But when you say they've only got two weeks to feed these chicks at their peak, that suddenly makes it much more worrying. Sally: Yeah, absolutely. Adam: Okay. All right we've had our little rest. Sally: I think we're getting rained on now aren't we. Adam: Oh are we? Oh no. Sally: I don't know I thought I felt a few spots. Adam: Right. Where to now? Now why am I asking you, you've no idea! Sally: I think this takes us to, this takes us back. Adam: You've no idea. I've got to stop asking you. Sally: We, I can remember on the… Adam: We're just going to go forward. And if you, if you find this at some future period, send our love to our families and loved ones. Sally: Yeah we're still wandering. Adam: Yeah we're wandering and we just left this under a tree. Sally: Oh, yeah, I definitely felt rain. Adam: Okay. A little bit more mud. Whoops. Yeah. My first slide. Oooh. Sally: Oh look at these. Look at the snowdrops. Adam: Oh yeah. Snowdrops. Sally: Now that's a Nature's Calendar event that you can record. But because they're already out we've missed it. Adam: Alright. Oh gosh I saw that little, there's loads of snowdrops! They're all over there. So that's an early sign of spring. Sally: Yeah so next year you have to keep an eye out before, you know, in like January. Adam: Oh so it's not a sign, it comes before spring really. The snowdrops end of winter really. Sally: Yeah. Well, it all depends where you sort of draw the line, doesn't it? It's all a continuum, really. Adam: Aren't they beautiful? Gosh. Sally: And for Nature's Calendar what you, the the key point at which you know, okay, they're officially open is when the flower is actually open like that and you can see i

Grab your hot chocolate (or mulled wine!) and get into the festive spirit with our Christmas special as we meet some reindeer, talk Christmas trees and explore a small but mighty wood with huge value for nature in the snowy Cairngorms National Park. We discover fascinating reindeer facts with Tilly and friends at The Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, and step into a winter wonderland at nearby Glencharnoch Wood with site manager Ross. We learn what makes a good Christmas tree, how the wood is helping to recover the old Caledonian pine forest of Scotland, why the site is so important to the community and which wildlife thrive here. You can also find out which tree can effectively clone itself, and is so tasty to insects that it developed the ability to shake them off! 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'm in the Cairngorms in Scotland. In Scottish Gaelic, the area is called – I'm going to give this a go - Am Monadh Ruadh. Apologies for my pronunciation there, but we are in the midst of a mountain range in the Highlands, of Scotland obviously. Generally we're about 1,000 metres high here but the higher peaks I'm told get to about 1,300 metres odd, which is going on for, I don't know, 4,500 foot or so. So this is a very dramatic landscape. We have rocky outcrops, boulders, steep cliffs. It's home to bird species such as the dotterel, snow bunting, the curlew and red grouse, as well as mammals such as mountain hare. But the reason of course we are here this Christmas is because it is also home to Britain's only herd, I think, of reindeer. Now, the reindeer herder is Tilly. She is the expert here and I've been braving, I am braving the snow and icy winds to be introduced to her and the herd. And from there after that, we're going to take a drive to what I'm told is an amazing wooded landscape of Caledonian pine to talk all things pine, and of course, all things Christmas trees. But first of all, let's meet Tilly, who looks after the reindeer. Adam: OK, we are recording. Tilly: That's good. OK. I'd better not say anything naughty then. Adam: I'll cut out any naughtiness, that's fine. Tilly: This is a bit of a rustly bag. It's more rustly than normal but never mind. Adam: What do the reindeer actually eat? Tilly: Well, so. We're now up in their natural habitat and we're looking across a nice heathery hillside with sedges as well. You can just see them poking through the snow and they'll pick away at the old heather of the year and the sedges. Adam: Right. Tilly: But we manage the herd and we like to feed them. So what I've got in my bag is some food for them, which they love. Adam: Right. And what's in your Santa sack of food now? Tilly: Oh, that's a secret. Adam: Oh, you can't tell me. Oh, God. Tilly: No, no. I can tell you. So it's a cereal mix and there is something similar to what you would feed sheep. Bit of barley, bit of sheep mix. Adam: That's awesome. So not mince pies and carrots? That's only reserved for Christmas Eve. That's probably not very good for them, I would have thought. Tilly: Yeah, no, I hate to say this, but reindeer don't actually eat carrots. Adam: Oh right okay, well, that's good to know. Tilly: But if ever children bring carrots for them, I never turn them away because we're very good at making carrot soup and carrot cake. Adam: Santa's helpers get the carrots. Tilly: And I'm absolutely certain that Santa eats all the mince pies, so all good. So anyway, come on through here. We're going now into a 1000-acre enclosure. It just hooks on there, that's perfect, it goes right across. We could actually once we get close to these visitors are coming off from a hill visit this morning. So you'll be pleased to hear that I am the boss. I'm Mrs. boss man and I've been with the reindeer for 43 years. Now, their lifespan is sort of 12 to 15 years, so I've gone through many generations. I've known many lovely reindeer and there's always a favourite and you would have seen some real characters there today. And you couldn't see them in better conditions. Anyway, do get yourself down and warm yourselves up. Oh, you've done very well to bring a little one like that today. Walker: He did pretty well until now! Tilly : You've done extremely well. Of course they have. He's got very red, a bit like Rudolph. The thing is there's just that wind, and it's the wind that drops the temperature, that chill factor. Adam : Yeah. So where are we going, Tilly? Tilly: So we're heading out towards what we call Silver Mount. They're not in here all year. Different times of year, sometimes they're all free range, some of them are free ranging, some are in here. Adam: When you speak about free range, literally they can go anywhere? Tilly: Yes they can. Adam: And they come back because they know where the food is? Tilly: Yes they do. They know where the food is, they sort of know where the home is, but they do wander out onto the high ground as well, more in the summertime. Adam: Right. And is that, I mean Scotland has different rules. There's a right to roam sort of rule here. Does that apply to reindeer? Is that the issue? Tilly: That is a moot point. Adam: Oh, really? We've hardly started and I've got into trouble. Tilly: No. Well, we lease 6000 acres, right? So we lease everything out to the skyline. Adam: So that's an extraordinary range for them. Tilly: It is an extraordinary range, but they know no bounds. I have to say reindeer sometimes do just pop over the boundary. Adam: And that causes problems with the neighbours? Tilly: Well, some like it, some aren't so keen. And we herd them as well, so we can herd them home. And we herd them by calling them. Adam: I was going to say, do you have a skidoo, or? Tilly: No, no. Absolutely no vehicular access on the hill. It's all by Shanks's pony, everywhere. Adam: Really. So you walk, and then you just ring a bell to herd them, or what do you do? Tilly: And you 'loooooow, come on now!' and they come to us. Adam: Right. And so what was the call again? Tilly: 'Looow, come on now!' Adam: Come on now, is that it? OK, very good. OK, I now move. Tilly: Yes. But hopefully they won't all come rushing from over there. Adam: I was going to say, yes, we've now called out the reindeer. Tilly: We've just joined a cow and calf here, who have just come down to the gate, and you can see just for yourself, they're completely benign. They're so docile and quiet. There's no sort of kicking or pushing or anything. They're very, very gentle creatures. Adam: And is that because they've been acclimatised because tourists come, or would that be their natural behaviour? Tilly: It is their natural behaviour, bearing in mind that reindeer have been domesticated for thousands of years. We're not looking at a wild animal here that's got tame. We're looking at a domesticated animal. Adam: Right. Tilly: It's probably more used to people than some of the reindeer up in the Arctic. So we have domestication embedded in their genetics. Adam: So what we're saying is, genetically, they're actually more docile. It's not because this particular reindeer is used to us. But originally then, if one goes back far enough, they were wilder? Tilly: Yes so, it's a really interesting process of domestication of reindeer, which happened in the Old World, so Russia, Scandinavia, inner Mongolia, outer Mongolia. And that is reindeer and many, many reindeer in these Arctic areas, are domesticated. They're not wild. Adam: And that started happening, do we have an idea when? Tilly: Probably about 10,000 years ago. But if you go to the New World, to Alaska and North Canada, exactly the same animal is called a caribou. Caribou are never domesticated. The indigenous people of these areas never embraced the herding and enclosing of reindeer, which was caribou, whereas in the Old World it became very, very important to the men, the people's survival. Adam: And then the caribou, do they have a different character? Tilly: Yes, they're wilder. And it's a little bit difficult to show today – you see quite strong colour variation in reindeer, which you don't see in caribou, and colour variation is man's influence on selecting for colour. So you'd get very light coloured ones, you'd get white ones in reindeer, you'd get very dark ones, but in caribou they're all the same, brownie-grey colour. Yeah, they felt that the white reindeer were important in the herd for whatever reasons, Germanic reasons or whatever. Interestingly, the Sámi - and I'm not sure if there could be a white one up in the herd here at the moment - describe them as lazy reindeer, the white ones. Adam: Why? Tilly: Well, I didn't know why until I worked out why white reindeer are often deaf. So they sleep, they don't get up when everybody else gets up and moves, and this white reindeer doesn't realise that the herd has left them. So they're not all deaf, but certain white ones are. Adam: Very important question, obvious but I didn't ask it to begin with because I'm a fool. Why are reindeer connected to Christmas? Tilly: Well, that's a really good question, because actually they think it stems from a poet called Clement C Moore, who wrote a poem in America, he had Scandinavian Germanic connections, called The Night Before Christmas, where Donder, Blitzen, Cupid, Comet, fly through the air with Saint Nick in the sleigh, the little Santa. Adam: Yeah. Tilly: But, so that really set the scene of eight reindeer and the sleigh, and that was based on the Norwegian God Odin, who had eight legs and strode through the sky with these eight legs and eight reindeer. Then we have Rudolph, who turns up, but he doesn't turn up until the time of prohibition in America. Adam: So Rudolph isn't in the original poem? Tilly: Absolutely not. Rudolph is an impostor. Adam: I didn't know that! Tilly: He, so he, it was a marketing exercise for a department store during alcohol prohibition. And it was Rudolph with his red nose, and his red nose is because of alcohol. Adam: Because he drank too much? So was it in favour of alcohol or was it going 'what terrible thing happens to you when you drink'? Tilly: I'm not terribly sure. But anyway, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was the song, so that adds to it. And then along comes Coca-Cola who used a red and white Santa to promote Coca-Cola at Christmas time. So the red and white Santa is Coca-Cola. Adam: Right. And the red-nose reindeer is from alcohol and reindeer comes from an actual American poem, of which Rudolph wasn't part of anyway. That's all simple to understand then! Tilly: Exactly. Perfect. Adam: Well, we're moving up to some of the more exposed slopes. Tilly has gone ahead. I'm just going to catch up back with her, and ask how she started as one of UK's first reindeer herders. Well, certainly, one of our few reindeer experts. Tilly: I came up to volunteer and I met the keeper who was looking after the reindeer for Dr Lindgren, who was the lady who brought them in with her husband, Mr Utsi, and he was quite good looking. Adam: Is this a revelation you wish to make to them? Tilly: And the reindeer were endearing, and the mountains were superb, and so I married the keeper. Adam: Right, you did marry him! I thought you were telling me about another man other than your husband. Tilly: So I married Alan. We married in 1983 and I've been here ever since. Adam: And so the purpose of having reindeer here originally was what? Tilly: Ah, good question. Mr Utsi came here and was very taken by the landscape and the environment, the habitat, because it was so similar to his own home country of north Sweden. And he begged the question where are the reindeer? Why are there not reindeer here? And it was on that notion that he and his wife, Dr Lindgren, devoted the latter half of their lives to bringing reindeer back to Scotland. Adam: So that's interesting. So, it raises the difference of ecological or sort of natural question, of whether these are indigenous animals. Tilly: Yes. So it's an interesting idea. Certainly, the habitat's available for them and they live in their natural environment. But when they became extinct, or not extinct, but when they weren't in Scotland, some people say as recently as 600 years ago and some people say as long as 2,000 years ago. If it's 2,000 years ago, they're described as a past native. Adam: So OK, I didn't realise that, but is there any debate around whether they were originally - whatever originally is – Tilly: They were definitely here. Adam: So they are native? They're not sort of imported, they have died out and been brought back here. Tilly: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, they were reintroduced, but how, what that time span is, some people say sooner than later, and Mr Utsi certainly identified this as a very suitable spot for them. Adam: Any idea why they might have died out? Do we know? Tilly: Probably a bit of climate change and also probably hunting. Very easy animal to hunt. Are you OK with this chitter chatter going on? Adam : Yes, it's all good, and a bit of, do you call it mooing? Tilly : Oh no, the reindeer aren't making any noise, they're clicking. Adam : Someone was mooing! Tilly : I think it was the people. Adam : I thought it was the reindeer making that noise. Tilly : Not at all. They're very silent. Adam : They'd have left this podcast thinking reindeer moo. Tilly : They would have. Exactly. No, they are really, really silent animals. Adam : There's a very large reindeer there coming down the road. Tilly : Oh, that's OK, that's Akubra, he'll do nothing to you at all. He's an absolute genuine reindeer. He's lovely. But he listened to the clicking as they walk. You can't hear it because of your headphones. Adam : OK, so I guess later on I'll put a microphone on a reindeer. That will be a first. One other thing I always imagined when you saw a set of antlers on a sort of grand Scottish mansion, I thought, oh well, they've killed that the reindeer. And actually, that's not true, is it? They fall off. Tilly: They do. You're absolutely right. Having it depends how you see the antler s. If the antlers are still on a skull, that animal has been killed and there's nothing wrong with that. There is a, you know, the animals need to be controlled. But you're also right. Antlers are lost every year and regrown again, so they cast their antlers and they regrow their antlers. So in a reindeer's life, if a reindeer is 10 years old, he will have just grown his 11th set of antlers. Adam: And the purpose of antlers is fighting? I'm a big girl, I'm a big boy, whatever. Tilly: Yeah, mainly for fighting, a weapon. So for the big breeding males, it's for claiming harem for females, so in the breeding season. And those big breeding bulls will actually lose their antlers around about now, their antlers will fall off and then they won't regrow their antlers until next spring, right? The females, little females like this, keep those boney antlers all winter and they use them for competing for food, so they can jab another reindeer and push it off and they can get into the food as a result. Adam: The other thing I can notice about some of them, but not the reindeer in front of us, but I think the one walking away, although this looks very bony, the other one has sort of felt on it, and what looks like blood. So what's going on there? Tilly: Yes. So they are the velvet antlers on the Christmas reindeer that have finished growing, but they don't lose the velvet properly and there is still potentially blood in the bone, as it were. Adam: So there's this sort of capillary underneath the felt. Tilly: Yes, exactly, because the antler's a really interesting appendage because it grows from the tip. It doesn't grow from the base, so the blood supply has to go all the way to the tip to grow. And the velvet skin carries that blood supply. Adam: Right. I see. So now the reindeer in front of us has no velvet so that can't grow. Tilly: And no blood supply. Exactly. And the only way she can grow, get more antlers or bigger antlers, is to lose the whole thing and grow it again next year. Yes. Adam: So any other serious facts we should note, to inform ourselves about reindeer? Tilly: Oh, lots of serious facts. So they're the only deer species where the males and the females grow antlers. Every other deer species, it's only the males that grow the antlers. They are the only deer species that's been domesticated by man. All the other species of deer, we're talking about 40 different species, are all truly wild animals. They can survive in the coldest parts of the world, so in the middle of Siberia, the temperature can go down to -72 and reindeer are still living there quite happily. Adam: It's cold today, but it's probably -2 or something. Tilly: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Man cannot live in the Arctic without an animal to live by, and it's reindeer that he lives by. Man would never have gone into these areas. Obviously now they're all digging up, you know, getting the oil and the gas and everything. But indigenous man can only survive in these areas if he has reindeer as his farm animal of the north, so they're really important to the indigenous people of the north. Adam: And in that sort of role, then, you can clearly eat reindeer. Then what else does it provide us? Tilly: Absolutely. So it provides with meat. There are indigenous people that milk them in season. They have these tremendous coats that are used for covering tents and for people's, you know, clothing. And the antlers? Not now, but the antlers would have been used as tools in the past. Adam: And have you ever had reindeer milk? Tilly: I have tried, yes, we have milked the odd reindeer for one reason or another. It's very rich, very rich. Adam: You have! Rich, is that good or quite fatty? Is it drinkable? Tilly: That's good. Yeah, it's totally drinkable. Totally nice. Adam: Yeah, I think yaks or a drink made from yaks, which was disgusting, I found in Mongolia, but I really found it difficult. It wasn't my thing. Tilly: But it wasn't the fermented one, was it? Because in Mongolia they're into fermented mare's milk. Adam: That might be what I had. Tilly: And that is revolting. Adam: Yes, OK, that's maybe what I had. How unusual is reindeer milk then? Tilly: Yeah. It's got a very high fat content. They produce very little milk, because if you had a great big swinging under in in freezing conditions, you'd have ice cream, you wouldn't have milk. Adam: The other thing I noticed that we haven't talked about is their hooves which look quite large and they look, I mean just from a distance, quite mobile. Tilly: Yes. They are very, very, very flexible animals and their feet, their hooves are very big. Of course, for snow. Walking on the snow, spreading the weight, but also great shovels for digging. So they dig. You know, if you're in two feet, three feet of snow in north Sweden, you've got to get to the food underneath and to get to it, they need to dig. So they're great diggers. Adam: And your life now here. It's quite a change from where you grew up, I appreciate. Tilly: Certain years, a very rural life I had then. I have an equally country-wise life now. I will go to my grave with reindeer. They are my complete nutter passion. They are the most wonderful animals to be amongst, they put a smile on your face. They live in a beautiful area. They're just, they're just lovely animals and they give me a lot of pleasure. Yeah, yeah. Adam: Fantastic. And if people are in the Cairngorms and want to have their own trip to see the reindeer, they call the what? Tilly: They call the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre. You could do it on the website, you can ring us up and they need to dress up. I'm sure you appreciate you, are your feet cold yet? Adam: No,

Join us for a woodland wander with adventurer, author and tree lover, Al Humphreys. The 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year has cycled round the world, rowed the Atlantic and walked across India, but now focuses on pursuits closer to home. P ioneering the concept of microadventures, Al explains how exploring small pockets of nature in our neighbourhoods helps us to better connect with and care for the environment. He speaks of enabling young people to embrace wild places, and encourages us to take time to be curious and astonished as we discover new places on our doorstep. 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: Today I am off to meet an author and adventurer, and there's a title you don't get to say, or indeed hear very much. He's the author of a whole ton of books, including Microadventures, which I want to talk to him specifically about, but also books called the Doorstep Mile, Local, There Are Other Rivers, Grand Adventures, Moods of Future Joys, Midsummer Mornings, Thunder and Sunshine, and I could go on and on. And I'm meeting him at a Woodland Trust site called Ashenbank Wood. It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is teeming with extraordinary wildlife. So we'll be talking a bit about the woods and a bit about the sort of adventures he's been on and the sort of adventures we might all be able to go on. Anyway, I'll let him introduce himself. Al: My name's Alastair Humphreys. I'm an adventurer and a writer and tree lover. Adam: Which sounds very exciting. So when you say you're an adventurer, what does that sort of mean? Al: Well, I was slightly hesitant to say that because I confess I feel more like an ex-adventurer, but I have spent pretty much all my career going off doing big adventures and then coming home and writing and speaking and making films about them. So they've gone ever smaller. I began by spending four years cycling around the world, I've rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, walked across the Empty Quarter desert, played my violin incredibly badly through Spain, and then gradually smaller onto what I call microadventures. So, encouraging people to find short, simple, affordable adventures close to home and squeezing around their busy daily lives. Adam: So that's interesting. You talk about the mini adventures. On a previous podcast we talked to the natural navigator, I don't know. Al: Ohh yes, Tristan. Well, he could tell you a lot more intelligent things than I can. He's great. Adam: No, but I think he took very much the similar view of yours. He went, I've done all these big adventures. But actually when you're doing these big adventures, it's all about tech, you know, and I needed satellite link ups and all sorts of stuff. And actually I wasn't, I was really looking at screens all the time. And he was going, the smaller adventures are actually much more revolutionary, because if you go low tech, that's a proper adventure. Just trying to find your way through a wood is a real adventure in a curious sort of way, even more challenging than doing something which sounds really flash. Al: Yes. And what Tristan's done fantastically is taking those skills from bigger journeys down to his literal daily life, hasn't he? If you, I get an e-mail from him, I think it's weekly or so and it just essentially says, where am I now and which way am I facing? And from his little clues in the local park, he can tell whether it's north, south, east, and west. Adam: Yes. No, you're right. I tried. I was very bad at that. And what I've learned, I've already forgotten. So tell me a little bit about why your connection to nature, then, how important that is to you, if at all. Al: So I had a nice, happy childhood growing up in the countryside, so as a kid I spent a lot of time running around the fields and woods and streams and things, so I suppose that hammers something deep into your subconscious, although you don't really notice it necessarily as a kid. Adam: Where whereabouts was that? Al: In the Yorkshire Dales. Adam: Ohh, God's own country. Amazing place. Al: Yes. Lovely part of the world. Yeah, so I really enjoyed that, and then my big expeditions, I've spent a lot of time in some of the world's really wild places and that's a fantastic backdrop to your adventures. But actually my – oh, and I also did a zoology degree. Although I found it incredibly boring, and now looking back I find it amazing that you can find something like that boring. But it's taken me stopping the big adventures, slowing down, paying attention to my local area to build a deeper connection with nature. And I don't know if that's partly just me getting old as well, I suspect there is an aspect of that. But whereas in my youth I was sort of cycling moderately quickly across continents and now pottering around small little parks and I have time to be astonished in a way that you don't necessarily when you're on a big A to B kind of journey. Adam: Yes, yes, there's the mechanics of getting you somewhere so challenging. Al: Yes, and you're on a mission. The mission is to go from A to B and not die, and to succeed. And that's all quite, and the backdrop of it all is this wonderful nature. But the things I've been doing more recently, then nature has come to the forefront. I'm not really doing any big, exciting mission. And therefore the paying attention to the small bits of nature and the changing seasons comes to the forefront. Adam: Yes, I did, I was just going to stop here. We're by one of the Woodland Trust sign posts about fungi and deadwood and the importance of that. We can talk a bit about that. But I was just thinking about what you said. I did an expedition across the Gobi in Outer Mongolia. I was working in Outer Mongolia, and it was, you're right, it was more interesting in retrospect. Because when I was there, we were just very concerned about the mechanics of the day. Getting through the day, making sure we weren't lost, getting food, all of that, rather than go 'this is quite an interesting place'. Al: Yes. Adam: Whereas, because we didn't meander, you go, I think the importance of meandering and almost lost time, and in a way, I think, boredom. I mean, it was interesting to talk about kids, you know, I don't know if you've got kids, but I think there's a lot of pressure on people to keep the kids busy, get them to this class, to do this, do this, do this. Actually the importance of just going, you know, 'they're bored now, they'll just go do something', is quite interesting. Al: Yeah. And I think that's a fantastic aspect of it, a bit of woodland like this, isn't it? Is to bring some kids here and essentially say there is nothing to do here, but equally you can do whatever you want. So go on, clear off. Off you go, go climb some of these trees, pick up some sticks, rummage around, see what you find. And that's the great thing of a woodland like this. Adam: Yeah. Do you have kids? Al: I do, yes. Adam: Well, how old are they? Al: Well, they are entering the dreaded teenage phase. So the um, it's really interesting, actually, because they're completely addicted to their screens and that would be their preferred choice would be to live in a damp, dark, smelly cave and never emerge. But when I drag them by their hair kicking and screaming into a wood like this, they're grumpy for a couple of minutes and then I just say clear off, go away and then they love it. And there's a real physical and mental transformation that's clear, when you can, once they get out here. Adam: Yeah. So I think that's interesting. And as a parent and everything, I just wonder what your take is on trying to engage a younger generation with nature and whether that's difficult, how you do it and whether we should be doing that, is that a concern of us or just, you know, let people do what they want? Al: I think it's a massive, massive concern and I also think it's extremely difficult. These screens are deliciously alluring. That's how they're designed. You know, if I was a kid today, I'd love to be just scrolling mindlessly through a thousand videos of people falling off their bikes. If it's endlessly addictive. So I think it's very, very hard and being a parent is exhausting. It's quite easy to not bother with the kicking and screaming, going to the woods, but I think it's really, really vital to do and the reward of when you get them out is of seeing how transformative that is for them, but also for yourself is really good. So yeah, I think screens are a massive problem. I think the nature disconnection of our society is a huge problem, both in terms of our physical health, our mental health, but also with our ignorance to the decline of species and the loss of wild places. So I think it's an enormous problem. Adam: And I mean you know, you're a broadcaster, you create a huge amount of content yourself. So I think there's an interesting question about how to frame that, because I fear then talking about all the trees are disappearing and wildlife is dying and that it turns, well, everybody, but perhaps especially younger generations off. They go, well if it's that blooming terrible, well, I'd just rather be on my screen. So how do you get that tone right, do you think? Al: That's a question that I've been thinking a lot about, particularly over the last year or so. I've just finished writing a book, which is all about exploring your local area, and when I wrote the book, in the early months of it, it was very much a moaning, ranting disaster book that everything's doomed and that it's all ruined. But as I was reading through my drafts, I was thinking, geez, this is this is, well, no one's going to read it for a start. But also, it's not going to encourage anyone. But as the project went on, I realised that I didn't need to frame it like that, because I could look at it another way, which was how much I personally was loving getting out into these small pockets of nature, what benefits I was getting and how much I was enjoying it. And then the more that I personally enjoyed it, the more I start to become connected and the more I start to care and the more hopefully I start to take action. So I think you're exactly right to try and frame it as a positive thing of saying hey, get out into X, Y and Z for these fantastic reasons and then hopefully the fixing the planet part will take care of itself, once there's enough people enthused. Adam: Yeah, interesting. Well, look, we'll carry on, but I said we stopped at this post. So the many dead and decaying trees you find here play a vital role in Ashenbank Wood's ecosystem. And that's a theme you'll see in lots of Woodland Trust places where deadwood is actually allowed to stay. In fact, it's not just allowed to stay, it's positively encouraged because of the fungi and the invertebrates, and then all the way up to the different sorts of animals that can live off that. So what looks like sort of untidiness is sometimes a real sort of oasis of life. Al: And this woodland here was completely smashed by the huge hurricane in 1987. So I think more than most woodlands, there's a lot of fallen down trees in this wood, which I suppose previously would have been carted off and chopped up for firewood or something. Adam: So let's, I mean, we're walking down this idyllic sort of dappled light, coming through the canopy of the still full roof of this of this woodland. So this is really idyllic, but take me somewhere else. So tell me about those adventures that you've had in these distant lands. Were there any particular that stand out for any particular reason? Al: Well, given that we're talking about trees, I spent 10 weeks, I think it was, on the frozen Arctic Ocean, up near the North Pole, which was a fantastic expedition itself, but the small detail that sticks with me now is that to get up there, you fly to Canada, then you fly to some smaller place in Canada and the planes gradually get smaller and smaller and the safety regulations get more and more lax till you're on the plane with people with rifles and harpoons and stuff. But up to this tiny little community right up in the north of Canada and the people - I went to visit the primary school there in the morning just to chat to the kids about my adventures and stuff. And they were chatting about my adventures and they were, the little kids there were amazed that I'd never seen a polar bear. And my riposte to them was along the lines of but you've never seen a tree! Where they where they lived, there were no trees, literally none above the tree line, and that really struck me, what it would be like to grow up in a place with zero trees. I mean, you get polar bears, which is pretty cool, but I'd be sad to have no trees. Adam: Yes, yeah, yes. And what was their view of that? Do they go well, I've never seen that, don't miss. Or were they interested in that? Al: Yeah, well, I guess everyone's normal is normal, isn't it? You know, they're going to school on skidoos and things like that. And so, yeah, it's just fascinating to see the different people's views of normal in the world. And before I started my big adventures, one of the motivating factors for me wanting to go off around the world was that I found where I lived incredibly boring, as a lot of young people do. Oh my goodness, where I live is the most boring place in the universe. I need to go far, far away. And it took me going far, far away to realise that actually the stuff I'd left behind is pretty fascinating in its own way. If only you're willing to pay attention to it. Adam: Yes, gosh, it sounds almost like a line from one of Tolkien's books. There you do a long adventure to find true interest is nearer to home. So I know you've written lots of things, but you've got a book just come out. So yeah, tell me, what's that book about then? Al: So I've written a book that's called Local, and it's about spending a whole year exploring only the single Ordnance Survey map that I happen to live on. So, the whole of Britain's divided up into about just over 400 Ordnance Survey maps. So wherever you live, you could go to your local bookshop and buy your local map. And what I'm trying to do is encourage people to do that and to realise how much new, undiscovered stuff is on their doorstep. Woodlands, footpaths, hills, fields but also towns, villages. What's behind the industrial yards? Like a proper exploring curiosity to your own backyard. Adam: And how much area does one of those maps cover then? Al: It's the orange Ordnance Survey maps. They're more detailed. So it's roughly 20 kilometres by 20 kilometres. Adam: Right. So a fair amount. Al: It's a fair amount, but I've also in previous time spent a year crossing an entire continent, so in that sense it felt incredibly tiny to me. And when I began the project, I thought 'this map is so small, it's going to be so claustrophobic and so boring'. But actually, by the end of the year, I realise, wow, actually it's enormous. I haven't even begun to cover everything on the map. Adam: So what sort of things did you find there that was a surprise to you, then? Al: So what I did every week, I would go out once a week for the whole year and my rule was to explore one grid square a week. So a kilometre square chosen at random and the random was really important because if it wasn't random, all I would do is just choose all the nice bits of woodland around my map. But by making it random, it sent me off to towns and suburbs and motorway junctions and all sorts of random stuff. And I discovered a few things. The first thing I discovered was how little I knew this area that I thought I knew very well indeed. The second thing that I realised was that, yeah, of course it's nice to go out to woods and hills and streams and stuff, but also I was surprised how much I loved the forgotten grid squares, the abandoned bits, the broken down, fallen down, behind the warehouse kind of landscapes. Like what's behind the supermarket car park? And I found in these forgotten edgelands a real sense of wildness and solitude that I didn't get in somewhere lovely. And this wood we're in now is lovely, but you're not going to get much solitude. There's a lot of dog walkers wandering around. And whereas if you're sort of behind some factory and some regenerating thicket, you think, wow, no one comes here. This feels adventurous. This feels wild. No one on the planet knows where I am. I'm only 20 minutes from a massive city, so I really was surprised how much I liked the forgotten corners of my map. Adam: Well, it sounds romantic the way you describe it, but behind a dumpster or a big factory? I don't really want to go there. Al: Why not? Adam: Because it's not pretty. It's probably got some unsavoury characters hanging around there. It might be more dangerous than crossing, you know, at some wild tundra, so it doesn't attract. I mean, but it does attract you, genuinely? Al: I think I'd have agreed with you entirely beforehand. It seems much nicer to come to a pretty woodland and stroll around there. What surprised me was how rarely I saw people when I was out and about, and we live in a very crowded country. I live in a crowded corner of the country, and yet once I was off meandering, once you're slightly off the beaten track, it felt like I often had the place to myself. In terms of being scared, I never had any problems at all. But I was very conscious that I'm a six-foot-tall white man who's quite good at running and that the countryside in general is not equally accessible to everyone. That really struck home to me in the year, how the sort of privilege I have of being able to essentially wander wherever I want. And the worst thing that's happened, someone will say go away and I go, oh, I'm terribly sorry and be all sort of posh and cheerful and it'll be fine and that's not fair, and it's not right that there's that inequality. Adam: I wonder what you feel because we're talking now, a little after there was a big fuss in newspapers about Kirsty Allsop as children or a child who went off travelling and I think he was 16 or something like that. And it raised the debate whether that's right or wrong and people have their own views, it raised the debate about adventure, what it is, how much freedom we should give younger people. And there were lots of comments, you know, look back a generation, my parents' generation, you know, people of 17, 18 were fighting in wars. You know, the idea of going on Eurorail doesn't sound that adventurous by comparison. But it does engage with the natural world, doesn't it? You've done very adventurous things. What do you think about our position on safety now? The sort of vibe about that? Al: I think a relevant aspect of that discussion what we're talking about today is if you look at the roaming distances that kids have from home and you can see statistical maps of this online of how far our grandparents are allowed to go from home, you know, they'd get on their bicycle with a pickled egg and off they'd go for a month and then come home for their tea. All that sort of stuff. When I was a kid, I was basically in the Yorkshire Dales. I was basically allowed to go wherever I wanted, and then I'd just come home when I was hungry. And of course, I had no cell phone. And then kids today would not be generally allowed that sort of thing, and they're kept very much closer to home. And I think that trusting young people in wild places is an important thing to do. Adam: Well, on that note of wild places and adventure, we talked a lot about maps and if you want to visit Ashenbank Wood and are looking for a map, it is grid reference TQ 675692, map re

Step into the heart of an ancient woodland as we explore Ashenbank Wood, a Site of Special Scientific Interest rich in history and teeming with wildlife. Woodland has stood here for centuries, but this haven is under threat. A proposed tunnel project, the Lower Thames Crossing, could harm the irreplaceable ecosystem and ancient trees here. Jack, leader of our woods under threat team, explains what's at stake and the challenges and strategies involved in trying to maintain a delicate balance between development and nature. A decision on whether the project goes ahead is due from Government in May 2025. We also meet estate manager Clive, who delves into Ashenbank Wood's history, tells us more about why ancient woodland is so important and shows us the unusual approach of strapping deadwood to trees. 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: Today I am at a site of Special Scientific Interest in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is teeming with extraordinary wildlife, and I'm told you can stand in the shadows of gnarled veteran trees and even spot some shy dormice, rare bats, and woodland wildflowers if you're there at the right time of year. But it is also a site under threat. National Highways propose to build a new tunnel linking Essex and Kent under the River Thames, and many feel that that will create a threat to the trees and wildlife here. So I've come not just for a walk, but to chat to experts and the first is the man responsible for coordinating the Woodland Trust response to big infrastructure projects and to chat to him about how infrastructure and nature can live hand in hand. Jack: So I'm Jack Taylor, I'm the programme lead for the woods under threat team at the Woodland Trust. Adam: Brilliant. And we're at Ashenbank Woods? Jack: We are indeed. Adam: Good, OK, sorry, yeah *laughs* I know I should sound more sure, we are at Ashenbank Woods. Jack: I think its full title might be Ashenbank Woods SSSI, site of special scientific interest. Adam: Oh right yes, yes. And we're going to see a bit later a colleague of yours, Clive, who will tell us more about the details of this woodland. But the reason why I wanted to talk to you first as we walk through, what is a lovely, actually dappled, dappled bit of woodland here is about your role in protecting places like this from development because, so what, what is your job? Jack: Yeah, it's beautiful. That's a good question *laughs* what is my job? I I suppose the the base of it, the basis of it, the foundation really is about trying to protect ancient woods and ancient and veteran trees from forms of development, but also from other threats outside of that as well. So non-development threats like air pollution, pests and diseases, deer overbrowsing. Most of my work does focus on working within the development sector and trying to protect against those development threats. Adam: Right, and you're the project lead. Jack: Yeah. Adam: When I first saw that, I thought you meant you're the project lead for this woodland, but you are not. You are the project lead for all development threatening woodlands throughout the UK. This is an extraordinary, I mean that's quite a job. Jack: Yeah, it's it's a lot. There are a lot of threats to have to deal with across the UK because we're always building always sort of growing as a nation. We always need sort of new forms of infrastructure and new sort of housing. We recognise that. But all of that does come with the added impact of having threats on our ancient woods and ancient and veteran trees, so we have a team of myself and my my wonderful team of four as well. Adam: Alright. Yeah, it's not big. Jack: No, it's not big, but they they are enthusiastic and they're great at what they do. Adam: So this is quite a political area because we've got a new government which has promised to improve lots of things, get the country working, build lots of homes. I think, I think the Prime Minister only recently talked about, you know, we're going to get spades in the ground, we're going to be doing stuff. Well, is it your job to stop all of that, I mean, or how do you balance what needs to be done for the country and what needs to be done to protect woodlands? Jack: Yeah. So it's so none of this is really about stopping development from from happening and we we have to be sort of quite clear that that's not what we're set out to do as an organisation. It's about trying to ensure that where development is happening. It's not going to impact on our most important and our most valuable woods and trees and that's why we do have a focus specifically on ancient woodland, but and then also on ancient and veteran trees as well, because we know that for the most part, there are lots of really valuable woods and wooded and wooded habitats and trees that are plenty sort of valuable and important. But we know that ancient words and ancient and veteran trees are likely to be our most important sites. We have to focus on protecting those. So we do have to object to some developments where we think the harm is gonna be too great, but we're never really looking to stop them from happening, unless the harm is too great. Adam: OK. Which way? Jack: Umm, I think right. Adam: OK. So one of the things I've noticed before, I mean, when I was following the HS2 debate, was politicians were going 'it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. We'll cut this down, we're going to replace them. I tell you what, we'll do you a deal, we'll plant two for every one we cut down.' On the face of it that sounds reasonable? Jack: OK. Yeah, not to us. Adam: Why not? Jack: Well, I think if you're, if you're looking at ancient woodlands and ancient and veteran trees, you're looking at something that is an irreplaceable habitat. There is no sort of recreating that habitat in in one space again, once it's been lost and the reason for that is these things take centuries to evolve and develop to create those sort of vital links between animals, plants, fungi, the soils as well. So ancient woodlands are especially important for their soils. So you can't really just take those soils and put them elsewhere because once that happens you completely disturb the relationships that have built up over centuries within them. And ancient and veteran trees, so you're talking about trees that for the most part are going to be centuries years old. How do you how do you replace centuries of development creating these wonderful sort of niche habitats for different parts of our ecosystems? Adam: And is it, you said quite clearly that it's not your job or the Trust's job just to stop development, just to sort of blanket go, 'hey, stop building' so is it about going, 'don't build here' or is it about saying, 'if you're gonna build here, this is how to do it with the least amount of impact'? What's the sort of your approach? Jack: Yeah. In some cases it is about saying not, not building here. It depends what we're dealing with, I suppose so it's different if you're dealing with, say, housing developments or leisure facilities as opposed to something like rail infrastructure or road infrastructure, which is quite linear in nature, so they can only really go in one place to deliver its purpose, whereas housing is not as locationally dependent. Adam: I see. So you feel you've got a better argument if it's a housing project, cause you can go, 'put it somewhere else', but the train journey from A to B has to sort of go through this area. You're you're on a loser there are you? Jack: Well, sometimes, but there are there are ways of of getting around sort of kind of impact. I mean it doesn't have to go absolutely sort of A to B in one way. You can think very carefully about the design to try and minimise impact on ancient woods. You can also look at alternative solutions, engineering solutions like tunnelling for example, so HS2 is a good example of that. The Phase One section which is going ahead between London and Birmingham, they actually put in a tunnel under the Chilterns, which saved about 14 hectares of woodland saved these three really good prime areas of ancient wood. And of course the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty came into that in a way, and they were trying to protect that also. But that was one solution to stop wildlife and nature being harmed. Adam: Right. So that's, was this, were you involved with that? Jack: Yeah, yeah. Adam: Amazing. So how difficult was that to get that that project through and try to avoid the destruction of all that woodland? Jack: Well, a lot a lot of destruction still is happening from High Speed 2. So about 20 hectares of ancient woodland has been destroyed at this stage now. A lot of the sort of preparation works for the Phase One section, that London to Birmingham bit, are now complete. So it it was difficult, but it it the way in which we were involved is we really brought ancient woodland to the table and put it at the forefront of considerations and and gave it a voice I suppose. It's not that it wasn't being looked at at all, but not nearly to the degree that we thought it needed to be looked at. And so we sort of kind of introduced that idea of well look, there's ancient woodland here, you need to be thinking carefully about the design and, you know, you think you're talking about halving the impacts on ancient woodlands from from our sort of kind of involvement and involvement of other conservation organisations in there as well. Adam: So a lot of it is trying to say, to make the argument, but also to raise the profile of that argument, Jack: Sure. Adam: To bring, population and say this is actually a loss. You know, cutting it down is is a loss. So how much harder or easier has it got for you to make that argument? Jack: Well, do you know, interestingly, I I would probably say that projects like High Speed 2, where there is such a big argument around the ancient woodland has raised the profile of ancient woodland itself. That's one of the sort of silver linings of that project for us, it's put sort of ancient woodland on the map in terms of habitat that needs to and is worthy of protection. So I think a lot of people now understand ancient woodland a bit better and what it is. There's still lots of awareness to do, you know, people just think of ancient woodlands as bluebells, big large oaks and it's not quite there. I mean, they're all so kind of varied in their nature and geographically across the country, but it's got people thinking about them. Adam: So that was something of a success, although I know more complicated than just 'yes, we won that'. Jack: Sure, yeah. Adam: Any areas you feel you really lost that, you know, keep you up at night, you go, that was that was a failure and you know, we've lost that woodland? Jack: Yeah. I mean, there've been, there've been some over the years. Back in 2012 a a large quarry was built on an area of woodland called Oaken Wood in Kent, probably taking about out about 30 to 35 hectares of ancient woodland which is massive, massive amounts, I mean, you're talking about in the region it's like 40 to 50 football fields and and and we're actually dealing with another threat to that woodland from an expansion of that same quarry. So yeah, you know that that one is one that gnaws gnaws at us, is that, you know, we don't want to see that happening anymore. Adam: Are you getting more optimistic that you know the public are more on your side that this is at least something that plays in policymakers' decisions now? Jack: I I actually think the public have always really been on our side. I think if you ask the the general public, they would probably say to you, we do not want to see ancient woodlands subject to any loss or deterioration, whatever the cause. Adam: Yeah, I think you're right. But they also say, yeah, but we like cheaper housing and want better transport links so. Jack: Yeah. Well, I mean the Lower Thames Crossing, which is going to be affecting this site that we're in now, Ashenbank Wood is sort of a prime example of that the the intention of that project is to relieve traffic congestion on the existing Dartford Crossing. Adam: Which I think actually I can hear in my headphones this, although we are, I mean it looks beautiful, there's quite a lot of background traffic noise. So we can't be that far away actually from from transport, from big roads. So explain to me you say this this particular site, Ashenbank Woods which is a site of Special Scientific Interest, so it's not just any old woods, this is a really special place, is under threat. What is the threat here? Jack: So the threat here is partially there will be some loss to the wider SSSI ancient woodland in the area when you're losing sort of kind of, Ashenbank Wood itself is not going to be subject to much loss, although there is a cycle route diversion going through the woods that might impact on some of its special features. Adam: Oh one second just, we've we've just turned off the path, we're just, oops crawling under some trees. I don't quite know why we've come, we we seem to have chosen the most difficult route. Well, it is beautiful because we've come off the path right into a magic dell. Jack: There we go. Adam: Oh, look, there's obviously some, I think, probably some kids have built a sort of camp, tent out of fallen branches. OK, so sorry so I understand that this is under threat from development, the the development plan though is what? What are they trying to do here? Jack: So so what they're doing is they're building a new crossing further to the east of Dartford Crossing, but that's going to involve connecting... Adam: A river crossing, a tunnel? Jack: Yes a river crossing. Adam: But it's a tunnel. Jack: Yeah, it's a tunnel. Adam: Why would that? That's that's great, surely? Jack: Well, the tunnel goes under the Thames. But in order to connect the A2/M2 to the to the sort of tunnel portal, they're going to be going through a lot of ancient woodlands as a result. So just down the way Clay Lane Wood is one that's going to be heavily impacted by by the proposals, you know several hectares of ancient woodland loss there, but in terms of our wood itself, you're you're gonna have impacts on some of the veteran trees from some of the works that are required in here. But you're also sort of increasing the traffic around the area on A2/M2. And as you can hear, there's already quite loud background noise from the traffic. If that becomes louder, it further reduces the suitability of this habitat for a lot of species. Adam: Right. So what are your, what are you doing? Jack: Well we're campaigning against it for one thing. So we've been campaigning against it since 2016, trying to bring those bring those sort of impacts down as far as possible. At this point in time, I would probably say that it's unfeasible, that it could go ahead without causing loss or damage to ancient woodland and veteran trees, and that's something that we have to oppose as an organisation. So we're working with other environmental NGOs, conservation orgs like RSPB, Buglife, Wildlife Trust, CPRE to to oppose this scheme. Adam: So, and if people want to keep an eye on the sort of campaigns you're running, and the sort of live issues around the country, where can they get that information? Jack: They can go along to woodlandtrust.org.uk/campaigns and they'll be able to find out about what we're doing in terms of campaigning for protection of ancient woods and veteran trees. We've got a really great campaign at the moment, all about protecting ancient and veteran trees and we're stood in in front of one of these at the moment, we call them Living Legends. Adam: Right OK, what a lovely link, because I I was gonna say you've brought me to a stand. It looks like a sculpture this, so what, so let me just briefly describe this. I mean, it's a hollowed out tree. There's, it almost looks like there's 3 or 4 bits of different trees supporting each other, and you can go hide in the middle. I mean, there's, I'd, I couldn't spread my arms in the middle, but I mean almost, you know, there's probably, I don't know, 4 or 5 foot wide in the middle. It's most extraordinary. What is this? What's going on here? Jack: So I would probably say this is an ancient ash tree. As trees sort of grow older, they they have to sort of kind of allow their heartwood to to rot away because that's what keeps them sort of stable and secure and in doing so that creates really important habitat for wildlife. And so this is what has happened to this ash tree effectively, its heartwood has sort of rotted away, it's still got this kind of all important surrounding ripewood to be able to support the rest of the tree. Adam: That's extraordinary. So the the, the, the wood at the centre of the tree, the heartwood has gone? Jack: Yes, yeah, yeah, cause it it's not it's not really useful for for trees at that sort of point. It's it's no longer the part of the wood that's carrying the sort of the water and nutrients up the tree. That's what the sort of outer ripewood does. So the heartwood decays away as they as they grow older. Adam: And that's just ash trees is it? Jack: No, that's that's pretty much all. Yeah. Adam: How ignorant am I? OK, fine. OK. I didn't realise that that happens to all trees. And it looks like that would cause an instability problem, but this looks actually fairly fairly stable, it's fine. Jack: It it's it's actually it's actually the other way they do it because it allows them to remain as stable as possible. And I I mean this one it doesn't, it doesn't look in the best sort of structural condition does it, but they need to do that for their sort of physiological condition because if they have if they're trying to support too much sort of heartwood then it affects the trees energy balances. And I mean that there's actual sort of scientific things here between the kinetic and the potential energy in a tree and why why they do this but all old trees do it and in turn it creates this amazing habitat, so you can see all these little holes in the in the sort of kind of inside wood and the decaying wood as well, where insects have sort of burrowed into it, where birds would be, woodpeckers, you know would be would be accessing that as well. Adam: Yeah. Amazing Jack: Amazing structures, aren't they? Adam: And so I'm going to meet now, one of the people responsible for actually managing woods such as Ashenbank, and he's waiting for me a bit further into the woods. Clive: OK, I'm Clive, Clive Steward, I'm one of the estate managers for the Woodland Trust working in the South East. Adam: So what is important about this site? What makes this wood special? Clive: What makes this site special is that it's ancient woodland or partly ancient woodland, but it's also managed as a wood pasture or has been managed as a wood pasture in the past, and because of that habitat it has lots and lots of old trees and old trees is very important in terms of what they support in terms of dead and decaying habitats. Adam: Right, so well we're standing by this extraordinary ash tree, I mean, it's extraordinary that there's an ash tree at all, given ash dieback, but it's extraordinary for all sorts of other reasons. But is ash a big part of this woodland? Clive: In terms of its name, Ashenbank, you you think it should be but but it's it is a component of the site but it's not, the majority species is not ash. Adam: What is this site then? Clive: So mostly sycamore and we're in the northern part of Ashenbank where we've got a lot of sycamore and we've got some really big old sweet chestnuts, but there are lovely old oak trees and hornbeam trees. Adam:

Did you know oak supports over 2,300 species of wildlife? Discover this and more fascinating facts in our episode dedicated to the nation's favourite tree. We join Trust experts, Jules and Kate, at Londonthorpe Woods , near Grantham, to find some fascinating growths on oak trees, known as galls, and learn why hunks of deadwood are so important. We then visit the star of the show and 'Lincolnshire's best kept secret' - the astonishing 1,000-year-old Bowthorpe Oak. It's one of 12 amazing oaks in the running for 2024 Tree of the Year . Which one will you vote for? 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, in this podcast, we're looking at the Woodland Trust's Tree of the Year competition, which is all about oaks and is on a quest to find the nation's favourite one. And there are lots to choose from. There is the Elephant Oak in the New Forest, the Queen Elizabeth Oak in West Sussex, the Darwin Oak in Shropshire, the Capon Oak on the Scottish Borders and plenty of others to choose from across Wales, Somerset, County Fermanagh, Cheshire and well, lots of other places as well. And you can vote for your favourite oak by going to the shortlist of them at the voting site woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote, so that is woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote and we'll repeat that again at the end of this podcast. Well, today I'm going to see one of the oaks in contention for the Tree of the Year, the Bowthorpe Oak in Bourne, in Lincolnshire, a tree which has a hollow interior and had previously, that interior had been fitted with seats and had been used as a dining room for 20 people in the past, 20 people! It must have been an enormous oak and that's not a practice I think that's recommended these days. Well, certainly not. But nonetheless it's a great oak which has played a great big part in the local landscape and is much loved, not just in the UK but attracts plenty of visitors from abroad as well. Now, oaks have an amazingly important part in our culture and in days gone by were, I think, central in Druid folklore, for instance, in fact one amazing fact I have learnt making this podcast is that the name Druid comes from druer, the Celtic for oak for the word oak and wid means to know, so Druid means oak-knower, so there's a good fact for you. Anyway, enough of me. I'm off to meet some people who know all about oaks and unusually I am not starting by a tree. So, unusually, we're starting in a car and I'm joined by two women from the Woodland Trust. So first of all, introduce yourselves. Kate: I'm Kate Lewthwaite. I am citizen science manager at the Woodland Trust. Adam: Wonderful. And our driver for the day is... Jules: Hi, I'm Jules Acton. I'm a fundraiser with the Woodland Trust. Adam: So we're going to look at a few oaks today, one of which is actually in the running to be the Tree of the Year, and you can vote on that still and I'll give you details a little later on on how to do that. But first of all, you were telling me that you have a little present for me. I always like to start the day with a little present. Jules: It's always good to start the day with a little present, I think and here's a little one for you. Adam: Oh, and it's wrapped up in tissue paper. It's an early Christmas present. How very good. So what is that? OK so do you want to describe it? Jules: OK so it's a little, it looks like a little woody marble really, doesn't it? And it's got a little tiny hole you can see just there and some extra other little tiny holes. That is an oak marble gall. Adam: An oak marble...ghoul? Jules: Gall. Adam: And how do you spell that? Jules: G A double L. Adam: G A double L and what what is it? Jules: So this is this is incredibly special, so this has in many ways changed human culture, this little tiny thing. Certainly amplified human culture. So this is a gall, which is made by, and it's made by a little tiny wasp. And the wasp lays a an egg in the in the bud of the tree of the oak tree. And it makes the oak change and it sort of changes chemically. It's really strange. And it makes the the oak form this little marble shaped thing on the end of a twig. And that becomes home for the gall wasps' larvae, and so that the little larva grows up inside it and it has this its own special home, but it's also full of lovely food. So that's interesting itself and that it's it's it's it's got this sort of little little home but it what's particularly interesting human, from the human perspective is that these kind of galls were used to make ink for about 1,000 years and the the kind of ink that they made, it was used, I think, until the middle of the 20th century. So kind of until quite recently. So Shakespeare's plays were written on oak gall ink, Newton's theories, the American Declaration of Independence, huge amounts of historic documents. Adam: So just trying to understand that, Shakespeare's plays were written on ink created by this thing? Jules: By a gall like, yeah, this kind of thing by by a gall. Yeah. But you can you can still now you can make gall gall ink from these little little things here. So it in many ways it it amplified, this little tiny thing we've got here, amplified the whole course of human history, culture, etcetera in our part of the world. Adam: Quite an extraordinary place to start our journey today. Wonderful. So, OK, so we're, yes, we'll put that away nice and safe and we'll start our journey. Kate, do you just want to start by telling me what we're going to do when we get out of the car? Kate: We're going to have a walk round Londonthorpe Wood, which is one of the Woodland Trust sites, one of our thousand woods that we own and we're going to see an oak tree that Jules has found for us to go and talk about. Adam: Fantastic. All right, well, let's go. Jules: Well, well so we've just seen some amazing galls on what looks like quite a young tree, it's probably about 30-years-old, would you say, Kate, this one? Kate: Maybe, yes. Jules: And, yeah, they're they're bright red and they're on the underside of the oak leaves and they look a bit like cherries and Adam: I was going to say, the one you showed me was all grey, you gave me an old rubbish one, didn't you? This is what they look like when they're on the tree. It's red, it does look like a cherry. Jules: Yeah, this is a particularly stunning one, isn't it? And they they are literally called cherry galls. And they again Adam: They're called cherry balls? Jules: Cherry galls. Adam: Galls, cherry galls. Jules: And they're about the same size as the marble gall that we saw earlier. And I believe they are also caused by a gall wasp. And but what is good about these kind of galls is that they're relatively easy to spot. So once you get your eye in, you start seeing them everywhere, so it's a really lovely thing to start doing, you know, with children or just looking yourself when you're out on a on a walk, you know. Adam: Wow. So that shows that a wasp has formed that? Jules: Yeah Adam: And these are non-stinging wasps, aren't they? Jules: These are non-stinging wasps. They're teeny, teeny, tiny wasps. They don't look like your your black, you know the big black and and and yellow stripey things that come at your ice cream, not that there's anything wrong with those wasps, they're lovely too. Adam: Inside that gall is baby wasps? Is that? Jules: There will be a little larvae inside there. Adam: And that's what they're using as as food, or is it? Jules: Yes, that's their home but it's also their food source. And I'm not at some point in the year the the the little tiny wasp, once it's developed, will will kind of drill its way out and then be set free to the to the wider world. But I think we'll find some other kinds of galls, actually. So it might be worth us moving on a little bit and just see if we can. Adam: OK. Moving on, yeah, that's politely telling me to be quiet and start walking. Jules: Oh sorry *laughs* Adam: Sorry, there's a, oh it's a tractor going up and down the field next to us. So that's what the noise is in the background. But the fact that we we sort of just held a branch here and and Kate was already, you know, lots of wildlife, jumped onto her jumper, does raise the issue about how many, how much wildlife an oak supports. And I was hear some fantastic number. Just tell me a little bit about that. Jules: We know that the oak supports more than 2,300 species and that they could be species that that feed off the oak, that live inside it, that live on, on, on or or around it, that you know they perch in it. So species using the the oak tree in all different ways and they are, they they they're birds and mammals, they're lichen, fungi, invertebrates. All sorts of different kinds of species, but what's important, I think, is that they're only the species we've countered, and I think there are a huge number more that we just haven't got around to counting would, would you agree, Kate? You probably know more about this than me. Kate: Yes, definitely. And some of those species can live on other types of tree, and some are only found on oak trees, so they're particularly important. And of course, we haven't started talking about the value of deadwood and all those wonderful rare beetles whose larvae live in the wood. So there's lots to be said about that as well. Adam: I'll tell you what, let's just walk all further away from this tractor, which sounds closer than it is, and you can tell me about the importance of the deadwood. Jules: Well we might see some spectacular deadwood. Adam: Oh well, we might see some, OK. OK, so we have stopped by some deadwood and you're going to explain why, is that right? Right. OK. Kate is going to explain. Well, why have we stopped here, Kate? Kate: Because deadwood is absolutely fantastic and we have a history of a nation of being a little bit too tidy and taking it away and using it for firewood and other things, when actually it's an amazing habitat in its own right. I'm just looking at the variety of rot holes, of larval galleries where the insect larvae have fed, and then the adults emerged. And it is like a whole habitat in its own right. And actually deadwood is really rare. Much of the woodland in the UK is not felt to be in good ecological condition and one of the reasons for that is a lack of deadwood. So it's incredibly important habitat and we don't have enough of it. Jules: One of the things I didn't understand until recently and Kate, you might know more about this than me, but there's there's different kinds of deadwood. So if you have, it's important to have deadwood in different formats, so standing deadwood so when the old tree is still standing upright, and and deadwood that's lying down on the ground. Adam: Right. What what why, so it matters if it's vertical or horizontal? Jules: It it it matters that you have both kinds. Adam: And why? Jules: Because, I feel like I'm at the edge of my knowledge, so it's because about it's about different habitats, isn't it Kate, is that right? Kate: Yeah, I think so. And the the wood will rot at a different rate. It's quite ironic because the one we're standing at now is actually at a 45° angle. So it's neither vertical nor nor horizontal. And of course, oak trees are absolutely full of of tannins, which I think are the same compound you find in the oak galls that enable the writing. But they also mean, you know this huge, great piece of deadwood here could be around for hundreds of years because it won't, it will rot very, very slowly. Jules: And and one of the great things is when you have deadwood right next to living wood as well, because that creates all these different conditions which will suit different kinds of invertebrates and fungi as well, so that that's really important to have this collection of of different kinds of wood in in you know in a similar area. Adam: Excellent. OK, we've, we've stopped. We've stopped Kate, and you've got very excited. Kate: It happens quite easily when I'm out in nature. And there's a whole pile of knopper galls on the floor here, and they're black. You know, they've dropped off the tree. They've done their job. The the wasp has flown off. But I wondered if we could, I've no idea if this is gonna work, I wondered if we could actually try writing with them because they are oozing black. Adam: Oh my, right, this is so exciting. OK, so this is like this is a modern day Shakespeare. Have you got? OK. The line is to be or not to be. I see. Hold on a second. So you've picked it up, right, I I think you might do something to it. Kate: Well, I might have to. Shall we see, shall we see if it just? Adam: Right, but you're not, you're just gonna? Jules: Ohh there we go. Kate: There is a brown ooze and it's I think it's not just from the path. Adam: I was going to say, it's not just mud. Kate: It's not. It's this kind of coffee colour. Adam: Wow, OK. And you are writing to be or not to not be. Kate: I am writing to be or not to be, I I don't know if I break it open a bit more if you might get. Ohh. This is gonna stain my nails, isn't it? Adam: OK. Ohh dear, don't worry I'll I'll pay for the the visit to to the nail parlour. Kate: *laughs* I shouldn't worry. Yes, we are actually getting some. Adam: To be or not to be. Well, I'm sure that would have actually been mixed with water or something. Kate: Most likely Adam: Or some alcohol and put into a quill, but that does what hold on, let me just rub it, see. Well, I can confirm that is not just what we have now created ink. Proper exciting. Kate: Absolutely. Adam: Thank you very much. Well, we're heading away from our ink gall-bearing oaks to see the main attraction of the day, which is a short drive from here. It is the Bowthorpe Oak, one of the contenders for Tree of the Year. It is rooted in a grass paddock behind the 17th century farmhouse nearby. In 2002, the Tree Council, in celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, designated the Bowthorpe Oak one of 50 great British trees. One of the 50 greatest British trees in recognition of its place in our national heritage. And I'm meeting the current custodian of the oak who runs the farm in which it lives. George: My name is George Blanchard and I am one of the family members here that farm at Bowthorpe Park Farm. Adam: Right. And you have, we're standing by this famous tree. People come here to see this tree? George: They do, yeah, we get them from all over the world. A lot of lot of UK, obviously, Europe and America, we get a lot of interest from America. Adam: Well, tell me a bit about this tree. George: So this tree, the Bowthorpe Oak, is the UK's largest girthed oak tree. It's absolutely stunning as you can, as you can see, fully in leaf at the moment it looks amazing and yeah, that's it's claim to fame. Adam: Right it's wide the widest I think it was the second widest tree in the UK. Is that right? George: We know it's the largest largest oak tree in in terms of it's it's the most complete, you know. So I think there could be wider ones, but not quite as complete. Adam: Not quite as good as your tree! George: Yeah, exactly. This is yeah *laughs* Adam: No, I agree. And and is is this a family farm? Is this? George: It is yeah. Adam: Right so you've grown up, you've you played under the boughs of this tree. George: I have. Yeah, yeah and and inside it as well. Remember it is hollow so. Adam: Right. Yeah. So tell me a bit about the sort of the folklore and the stories around the tree. George: Yeah so oak trees naturally start to hollow at around 500 years old, but this one was hollowed even further, back in the 1700s by a chap called George Pauncefort and Adam: It was, it was, it wasn't naturally hollow, he hollowed it out? George: They they do, they do naturally hollow, but he hollowed it even further. And you can tell this when you're looking inside it, because the the sides are quite flat. It's very unnatural. You can see so the hollowing has been done by by tools. And so he also put benches around the inside of it and a and a doorway on on the west side and even even sort of paved the flooring but and and put a pigeon loft in the crown, which I think, I think back in the day in the 1700s, if you had a pigeon loft in your tree, you were somebody *laughs*. Adam: Ohh really that's like Lamborghini time, right? OK, forget your Lamborghinis, I've got a pigeon loft in my tree. George: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And he would have parties in there as as you would, wouldn't you? Adam: Well, yeah, of course. I mean, you've gone to all that trouble. Was he a member of the family? Was this being passed down? George: No, no, there's no there's no relation, no relation. We've we've only been farming here since the sort of late 40s. Adam: Right. OK, amazing. Amazing stuff. And I mean, and it looks in fairly, I mean as you say, it's in good leaf, it's in also just it looks to the untutored eye in good nick as well, generally healthy. George: It is yeah. Really good really good condition currently. We lost a a limb off the back and that was that was quite concerning because it's it's quite dramatic when they shed a shed a limb, but it is what they they naturally do. We have an inspection done on the tree annually, but at the time of losing the limb, we were, we were quite concerned. So we upped the type of inspection we had done. And they were quite, quite invasive, I say invasive it was, you know, using really small drills, to see if there's any adverse rotting in any places. But no, they were really happy with the condition of the tree and and how healthy it is so other than any sort of man-made issue, I don't see why it shouldn't carry on growing as it is. Adam: And it's amazing because, I mean, you know, it's taken us quite a while to get here and people come here all this way just to see this tree. George: They do, yes, yes, seek it out, we call it Lincolnshire's best kept secret. Adam: Right. Amazing. From all over the world? George: They do yeah yeah. From all over the world. Like I say, a lot of a lot of Europe people come from Europe and a lot of people come from America. We find that the two two types of people from America, those that really appreciate it and those that just can't get their head around it because it's nowhere near as big as their redwoods *laughs* Adam: Right? Call this big. Call this big, you should see... George: Exactly. Yeah, call this big, we've got bigger. Adam: Yeah OK. Brilliant well thank you very much, I will take a tour round it. George: Thank you. Adam: So one of the other, now I have to say, first of all, let me have a look at the front front, we've taken a book with us because Jules has published a book called Oaklore and you've brought it out here because there is a poem about this oak in your book. Jules: There is and it was written well over 100 years ago by a poet called John Clare and but the interesting thing is when he wrote this poem this would have already been an ancient tree, so it's it's quite an interesting record that he was standing in awe, looking at this tree, just like we are now really. Adam: Right, right. So when did he write this? Jules: I don't have the exact date in front of me, but I know it's over well over 100 years ago. Adam: OK, well over 100 years and you're going to put on your best poetry reading voice. Jules: *laughs* I'll have a go. Adam: Go on, give us, I always love, I mean, we did this in the Sherwood Forest podcast where we took a book about Sherwood Forest and a book about a tree to the tree it's about. So we're now going to read a poem about the tree we're standing by. So this poem by John Clare. Jules: And it's called Burthorp Oak. So here we go. Burthorp Oak. Old noted oak! I saw thee in a

Accompanied by experts Adam and Louise and a 100-year-old-book, our latest episode takes us to Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Forest to visit two astonishing trees. The Parliament Oak and Major Oak have each stood through several centuries and have fascinating stories attached to them. Equally astonishing is the fact that magnificent oaks like these don't have legal protection like our built heritage. Join us as we learn the magical lifesaving strategy of ancient oaks that could make them immortal, how penny coins can tell us about the health of a tree, whether Robin Hood really lived in Sherwood Forest and what you can do to help earn living legends like these the protection they deserve. 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 Shaw : Today I'm off to Sherwood Forest , home, famously, of course , of Robin Hood. The name Sherwood Forest actually comes from its status as a s hire and the word s hire was turned into s he r ...wood of Nottinghamshire, therefore Sherwood . A nyway , I've come to visit two trees, in particular : the Parliament O ak and the M ajor O ak. But before we get to that a lot more details on why those trees are so important later on , but first of all , of course I have to meet my two guides for the day. Louise Hackett : I'm Louise Hackett. I'm the t reescape lead for Sherwood. I manage essentially a partnership project across the landscape of what was the historic Sherwood Forest. So that extends from Nottingham up to Worksop and Retford. Adam Shaw : Fantastic. So huge portfolio and I'm also joined by another Adam. So you are ? Adam Cormack : Adam Cormack and I head up the campaigning team a t the Woodland Trust. Adam Shaw : Fantastic. And we are standing in a beautiful field . I've forgotten to bring my suntan lotion so I could have a red bald head by the end of today, which is very naughty, but we are standing by , w ell, I'm going to start with , it's called a palace , it may not be what you quite imagine this to be. I'll try and put this on my social media and the Woodland Trust social media so y ou know what this looks like, but who just wants to explain to me a bit about where we are? Adam 's being thrust tow ards the microphone. Adam Cormack : So we're in a field in the middle of Nottinghamshire in a place called Clipston e and w e're by King John's Palace, which is a few remaining walls from an old royal hunting lodge that's about 900 years old. So this dates back to that time when Sherwood was a royal hunting forest. So it's called King John's Palace. But you have to kind of re move that idea of a palace from your mind as you're saying, Adam, it's basically a few remaining walls. Adam Shaw : Yeah . Adam Cormack : Which I you know, I can still still find it interesting. Kind of imagine what life was like here years ago . Adam Shaw : Yeah . No, it is. I mean, yes, I mean look, it is a few remaining walls, but it is beautiful. It's you know it's it's it's not like a a breeze block or anything like that. OK. So we've we've talked about history already a couple of times and the only thing I know about Sherwood Forest and I think I'll be joined by lots of people here is Robin Hood. So Robin Hood was here . A part from Robin Hood, what else is the historical context of this place? Louise Hackett : So yes, as as Adam was just saying with the area subject to forest law, which is what made this area a royal hunting forest, the vert and the venison was protected for virtue of the king and that resulted in an incredible landscape that was a a rich mosaic of oak b irch woodland, lowland heathland, acid grassland and it covered a huge swathe and it was incredibly dynamic landscape with a long history a s as a hu nting forest that would have looked very different thro ugh the years. Adam Shaw : So this , it was protected because the king wanted to ride around and catch wild boar and all of that sort of stuff. Louise Hackett : Absolutely. Adam Shaw : And what sort of period are w e talking about? Louise Hackett : So we're talking from roughly the 1100s onwards or or earlier than that even , it has a long history. Adam Shaw : Now also on the car journey here from , you were very kind you pick ed me up from the station we're quite a way from the station , b ut you w ere , I was surprised you also said o h look we've been we've been in the forest all this time. So I often think of oh, we get to a forest and there's a bit of woodland , b ut we've been driving half an hour , I don't know , 40 minutes or so , a nd throughout that time we've been in Sherwood Forest. Louise Hackett : Absolutely . And I think this is one of the things that I think when people say the word forest, people think of wall to wall trees. But as we were just saying that actually what a forest refers to i s an area subject to forest law. And these would have been complex mosaics of lots of different habitats, primarily open habitat. That's what would have made it such an enjoyable environment for the king to ride t hrough. Adam Shaw : Yeah , cause you can't ride through the actual trees too much. Louise Hackett : Absolutely , no . Adam Shaw : OK. And a couple of times, you've already mentioned a new phrase to me. W oodland l aw ? Louise Hackett: F orest law. Adam Shaw: Forest law. N ever heard of that. What is forest law? Louise Hackett : So s o this was essentially the the a separate law system that applied to hunting forests, and there were numerous hunting forests across England. So this was a separate law system, as I say, that protected the ve r t and the venison. So anything green and growing and the the animals, primarily those that you'd hunt. Adam Shaw : Right. Protected it for the king. Louise Hackett: For the king. And his friends. Adam Shaw: OK, but it has so , r ight. OK, fair enough. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because you know, that's really part of the aristocracy a nd all, you know, quite problematic in lots of social ways. But actually it has an environmental benefit - because it was saved for the king , i t happens to be safe for everyone else and nature itself . Louise Hackett : Ab solutely. So so there will have been small communities that lived in these areas, but they would have had very strict rules as to what access they had to certain areas of the land and and what they had access to and and b ut but all of that defined really what this looked like as a natural landscape and it it really protected qu ite a special wood pasture habitat. Adam Shaw : Wonderful. Now also Adam, you are clutching a very exciting looking book, proper old big bound book called Sherwood Forest by Joseph Ro d gers. So how old is this book for a star t ? Adam Cormack : So this book is just over a century old . Adam Shaw : W ow. OK, proper old book. And this is all about Sherwood Forest. So how how's it split out this book? I mean, it's a it's a huge t ome. So was it by tree or by person or what? Adam Cormack : Yeah , it's it's a hefty t o me, isn't it? It's it's so it's a kind of miscellan y of Sherwood F orest r eall y, so it covers the important old trees of Sherwood Forest. There's a little chapter on the M ajor O ak, which is a tree that we'll see today , a chapter on the P arliament O ak. And there's a chapter on where we're standing now, King John's Palace. So I thought I might just actually read out the first sentence because I think it's a good kind of encapsulation. So remember, this is written sort of 100 y ears ago, so 'S uch a feeling of quiet dwells in this little sleepy village consisting of a few labourers ' cottages and farmhouses with straight canals along the meadows in place of the pleasant river, with the golden ragwort flourishing on its banks. That , from its appearance, a stranger would gather no idea of its ancient importance, for there is nothing to indicate the rude state which must have at one time here been maintained . ' Adam Shaw : Well, look, it's a nice day we're standing by this palace. That's not why we've come here though. So just give me an idea of the trip we're going to take today. Adam Cormack : So we're going to go and look at two really important trees of Sherwood Forest n ow . We're gonna go and look at the P arliament O ak, which is just five minutes up the road from here a nd there is links to King John's Palace. So we'll talk about that when we're at the tr ee. And then we're going to go to the M ajor O ak and let Lou just talk a bout the M ajor Oak . Adam Shaw : OK, that's all to come. B it of w alking involved first though . So as we walk towards our first big tree of the day, the so-called Parliament O ak, I'm going to read from the other Adam ' s 100-year-old book about this oak. I'm going to be very careful so I don't trip over and ruin this book which has been l ooked after for over a century. ' It has been stated with some probability of truth that King John, while hunting in the forest, was informed by a messenger of a revolt of the Welsh and of an insurrection in the north of England that he hastily summoned a parliament to meet under this tree, and that it owes its name t o that incident. On another account, it connects it with Edward I , who , when on his way to Scotland in 1290, s ummoned a p arliament to meet at Cli p ton , at C lipstone , s orry, so it has no idea why it's called the Parliament Oak , so it could be to do with King John or it could be t o do with Edward I . But it is called the Parliament O ak. And here it is in this beautiful book with a drawing or engraving of it, it looks like a sort of split oak . I'm just trying to see how accurate it is. Ohh , there it is. I'm being , I'm looking at the wrong blooming thing. There we are. So we can see it in the book and I can see it in real life. And what a wonderful , what a wonderful book. And what a wonderful place to read out that paragraph. Alright , we're resting , I just feel this is so apt , w e're resting our book about the Parliament O ak on the P arliament Oak and and Lou it's I've lost the place. Louise Hackett: Which page? Adam Cormack: 197 . Adam Shaw : I f you're following along at home on the few versions of this 100-year-old book that might be out there, it's page 197 *laughs* . I feel like I'm leading a congregation. If you turn now, that's in your prayer books, past the S hambles O ak. There we are, the Parliament Oak . S o Lou. Did I miss out something important you wanted to read about t his ? Louise Hackett : I just wanted to point out on the illustration, because I think on on some of the old illustrations you can s ee that there's t wo, what we call functional units, so one of the incredible thing s ancient oak trees do is they can separate themselves into functional units, which is a fantastic life saving strategy, which I I'll happily talk about more later . B ut on a lot of the old illustrations you you see what essentially are two functional units remaining of the tree. Adam Shaw : So just to be explained, a functional unit is what looks like two trees, but you're actually saying this is one tree which looks like two trees, but you're calling them functional units. Louise Hackett : Absolutely. So as it's aged, the tree ha s essentially segmented itself. And these these segments are what was once one tree starts to split out into multiple segments, which generally is associated with a large limb, but it means that if you have, if you lose one of your limbs and it's quite a catastrophic lo ss, y ou could lose that functional unit at no risk to your other sections, so it's quite a good li fesaving strategy. So we so in a lot of the old images you see these two sections and because we've got two trees still standing here today, people think that they are those two fragments. But but in fact it's only one remaining a nd the way we can identify that is you can see on the left - hand side of this illustration, you can see a small b urr forming. That's what I'm resting th b book on, so it has grown quite considerably th is bur r since since the illustration. Adam Shaw : Right. Wow. It 's a little b ump 100 years ago, it's now a proper table. Louise Hackett : Absolutely. Yeah . So this is what's still standing and the piece of d eadwood on the ground next to us. .. Adam Shaw : OK, let's have a look. Oh , OK. Yes, that was that whole tree. Louise Hackett : It was the section that joined those two functional units, so it was. .. Adam Shaw : Right. And what's happened to that other functional unit the n, that's gone? Louise Hackett : So that's been lost. Yes, absolutely. So s o what, what you can't see in this image is essentially it was, it was a huge tree at at its kind of height at its kind w hen it was at its kind of fullest , 9 .5 met res in circumference, so it was a large tree and it would have been completely hollow at that at that point. And and that's when basically the the as the deadwo o d decayed a nd just those two functional units remained and and now just one . B ut what's m agical with this tree is that you'd never know that to look at it . T oday without these kind of past illustrations and photographs b ecause what's actually happened is it's precluded fully around this t his remaining fragment, so it looks l ike a 100-year-old oak. But actually it's p otentially 900 years old. Adam Shaw : Wow. That's extraordinary, isn't it? So, yeah , well, that is extra ordinary . I was going to say, how old is it , s o we're looking at a 900-year-old oak here . Louise Hackett : B ut it's it's done t his magical thing of having gone back to a younger stage of its life , we we quite often think of trees of o f being young, mature, old and then dying. But actually what they have the capability of, which is what makes ancient trees so special is, they can go back to an earlier life stage. So this is now a mature tree and there is nothing preventing this tree going through that full lifespan all over again and becoming a huge hollow ancient of the future. It was already in ancient but. .. Adam Shaw : Yeah , we ll that's extraordinary. So really, it might never die because it just rejuvenates, really. Louise Hackett: Absolutely. Adam Shaw: A n amazing thing. Well, that is brilliant. And Adam is also standing here and we're talking about history, Adam. And we're talking about the history of this tree, but that feeds into quite an important bit of work you're doing about history in general. Adam Cormack : Yes, so the Woodland Trust has been running a campaign called L iving Legend s for the past couple of years, which is about improving protection for trees like Parliament O ak, but other very old and very special trees. So we're calling them heritage trees. So people have been campaigning for protection of these trees for a very long time , for decades. But the last couple of years is where we've pulled that all together into a campaign called L iving L egends. We've got a petition that's been supported by over 85,000 people calling for legal protection for very old and special trees. Adam Shaw : So don't they have , I mean I always thought trees were protected anyway and you're not allowed to cut down a tree even in your own garden, because the local council object ? Adam Cormack : Well, I think it's just I think there's a sort of I think what you're talking about there is the sort of day-to-day protection that trees have from our feelings and attitudes towards them, which is the sort of social contract that we have that you don't just cut down trees. And that's the thing that protects trees sort of day in day out . T here are policies and a few legal instruments , f elling licences , tree preservation orders, that sort of together , p rovide trees with a basic level of protection, but there's nothing to recognise the value of this tree , the Parliament Oak , so 900 years or maybe even a bit older than that, in the way that we were just at King John's Palace , s o we were there we were looking at a kind of heritage asset that was sort of similar sort of age, really , grade listed has legal protection. It's r ecognised for its value a nd for what it can tell us about the past and tell us about ourselves and what we think should happen is that trees should just have the same level of protection. Not all of them, just the oldest and most special. Adam Shaw : So this 900-year-old t ree doesn't have any historical prote ction c ompared to the 900-year-old o d d p alace, which does have historical protection. Is that fair? Adam Cormack : You just said it Adam, no it doesn't . But that's the case for all of our really old and special tre e s. So rry we've just got a tra ctor going past. So you can , we're here , I mean, the tree is just, you can probably hear the cars going past , i t's on the corner of a road , the corner of a farm track. And I think that just shows you that these trees aren't a ll in really safe , secluded places , t hey're they're there in d ay-to-day life, on road verges, parks, gardens, sometimes in w oodlands and farms . Adam Shaw : Yeah . It's odd, isn't it? Because it is a part of the British history, not just n atural h istory. But, you know, history of p arliament, of democracy, of kings and q ueens. And yet it it doesn't have any legal protection that if it was made of bricks, it would have. But because it's actually not made of bricks, it doesn't have . Adam Cormack : That t hat's it r eally. So I think we, you know , we protect the things that we've made as h uman beings. So we protect the b uildings, the artworks, the things that we've c reated but s o these old tre es should just have a similar level of protection. It's great that we protect all those other important things scheduled ancient monuments, battlefields, works of a r t. Trees just fit into the same category. Adam Shaw : A n d if listeners to our podcast believe in what you're saying and want to support that, how do they do that ? Adam Cormack : S o listeners can go to the Woodland Trust website or just go to Google and type Living Legends campaign and they'll go straight to our petition and they could be the 85,00 1 person to sign our petition although hopefully it will have gone up a bit b y the time people listen to this. Adam Shaw : So, L iving L egends, that's what you're looking for. The W oodland T rust ' s Living Legends campaign, and you can add y our name to that. Adam Cormack : That's right. And and I think there's one other thing to add to that, which is that over the last six months, we've been successful in securing a private members ' bill for heritage trees. So we're actually on that journey now towards legislative protection for some of these trees . Baroness Young has introduced a private members ' b ill, so this is a heritage trees bill and it introduces thi s designation of heritage trees, so it's not law yet. It's got quite a long way to go before it does become law, but you can go online y ou can Google that too, and you can read it for yourself. It's only five pages long i t's quite short, it just talks about bringing in legal protection for very old and special trees. Adam Shaw : Of course, and and that needs government support , we've got a new government, so who knows what will happen to that. But I I know you'll be h oping that actually g ets pushed forward. Adam Cormack: We will yeah . Adam Shaw: OK, well, while everyone is going to that petition to sign their names, we can walk on to another tree y ou wanted to show me. Where's that? Adam Cormack : So we're gonna go to the M ajor O ak now, which is probably the tree that most people know or think about when they think about Sherwood Forest. You know, it's legendarily the place where Robin Hood lived. You know, you can make that decision for yourself when you get there and you

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. The

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 S teel C ity renowned for steel production during the 19th century I ndustrial R evolution. But d espite 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 f our 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 ; i t is two miles from the city centre , the first in a series of connected g reen 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 R iver 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 : L et'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 t hat tree over there. Cause we planted it. I s 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 t hat 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 a s there's an awful lot of football here. So the ground is really compacted, I think it's a r ed oak. Adam : A r ed oak. Catherine : That should be the right tree for this place . W hen 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 compact ed 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 a ctually 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 o n this particular trip . Catherine : Sheffield is actually the most wooded , w ell, it's the most tree d 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 caf é s 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 , a nd here's a real case in point, because although it all looks very beautiful now and as we go up the val ley you'll see, you know it, it gets more rural . A ctually i t'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 n atural 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 h ull s, the little factori es where t h ey t hey use t he the power of the water to sharpen t hose blades and to you know, to forge them and things . A s we go further u p, we 'll start to see how t he Porter kind of has been sort of sectioned of f. I t's been chopped up and made into pond s. Ther e's what we ca ll go its 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 t he most wooded city in the UK per head, and yet it hit the headlines a few years ago when the c ouncil 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 . P eople 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 we re 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 , t hey'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 c ouncil 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 policem en 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 m iddle 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 m ad . 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, s o that's the way to do it. So. But I mean, that was the thing Sheffield is , s o 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 c ouncil stopped. If there are things going on in your city, dialogue is always the best way, and consulting and c o - 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 y ou know, it's not i t's you're not properly doing your job, really. Adam : And you said t here'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 Victorian ised , it's all got these lovely little r ills 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 waterfal l s . 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 P ark 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 h ull 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 . I n the ' 30s some of these p ools were were k ind of put over to and probably in Victorian t imes as well. T hey'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 C rook e s , a ctually . T here are people going swim ming that that's a , t hat'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 th e 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 j ust a w alker , 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 walk ing 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 t hat's another word . What was a mester ? Catherine : T hat is another word. A mes ter . That is. I mean. So I think it was like a little master, so like a master c utler 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 t o a big sign ' S hepherd ' s W heel 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 n utter just turning a wheel. That does nothing. Catherine : And actually an interesting well timber fact is that up in North Sheffield there's a wo o d called W oo ll ey W ood there and all the trees were a lot of t he trees are horn beam trees. Now h orn beam is really good , as its name might suggest , because it it was used to mak e make the cogs for f or for kind of structures like this, because the the wood was so very hard and also it was quite waterproof . T here'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. Th ere ' 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 , h ornbeam is, you r go - to wood . I'm sure there's n ot many people out there building water wheels, but you know very useful information i f 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 , t his road . I t's H anging W ater R o ad , 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 . S till see we've got the two rivers here. Adam : So tell me about where we're heading off to now . Catherine : W e'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 y ou know, ancient ... blue bells 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 m anagement, where you would have had something with called copp ice 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 w as the the heat that they needed. So charcoal b urning was quite a big industry . A nd and the other thing is that's good for us i s that actually having kind of areas of open w oodlands, 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 w e heading ? Catherine : We'll go back down that way. Adam : OK. All right. You may be able t o hear it's not j ust 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 c ouncil 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 wh at 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 w e work with community groups and schools to plant those trees and provide aftercare i n the first three years, two - three years. Adam : Aftercare for the trees. Yeah , ye ah . 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 L ow edges , which is quite a deprived area of Sheffield. In the s outh of Sheffield . A nd 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 a nd 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 . S o 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 sor

This was certainly an episode with a difference - we begin in a Natural History Museum packed with 4,000 taxidermy animals! The Woodland Trust site and museum now share space once owned by the famous Rothschild family who collected stuffed species, as well as live exotic animals that roamed the park. We tour Tring Park's fascinating historic features, from the avenue named after visitor Charles II to the huge stone monument rumoured to be for his famous mistress. Beneath autumn-coloured boughs, we also learn how young lime trees grown from the centuries-old lime avenue will continue the site's history, how cows help manage important chalk grassland and the vital role of veteran trees and deadwood in the healthy ecosystem. 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: Today I'm heading off to Tring Park, one of Hertfordshire's most important ecological areas. It's filled, I'm told, with wildflowers and some really interesting historic features, as well as some stunning views. But first but first, I was told to stop off at the Natural History Museum at Tring, which is really a very, very short walk from the woodland itself. I was told to do that because they said it might surprise you what you find. It definitely did that. Because here are rows and rows of what I'm told are historically important stuffed animals. So I'm at the the top bit of the the galleries here at the Natural History Museum at Tring and well, bonkers I think is a probably good word to describe this place and I mean, I feel very mixed about it. So we're, I'm passing some very weird fish, that's a louvar, never heard of that. But there's a a rhinoceros, white rhinoceros, a Sumatran rhinoceros. There's a dromedary, a camel. There is a rather small giraffe. There is a head of a giraffe. Coming round over here, there is an Indian swordfish from the Indian Ocean. Goodness gracious, it looks like something from Harry Potter. That's an eel, very scary looking eel. And then there is a giant armadillo and it really properly is giant, an extinct relative of the living armadillos, known from the Pleistocene era and that's the period of the Ice Age, from North and South America, that is absolutely extraordinary. And there are some very, very weird things around here. Anyway, that's certainly not something you'd expect to see in Tring. Goodness knows what the locals made of it back in the Victorian ages, of course this would have been their only experience of these kind of animals. No Internet, no television, so this really was an amazing insight into the world, beyond Britain, beyond Tring. There is something here, a deep sea anglerfish which looks like it's got coral out of its chin. I mean, it's properly something from a horror movie that is, that is extraordinary. Claire: My name is Claire Walsh and I'm the exhibitions and interpretation manager here at the Natural History Museum at Tring, and my job involves looking after all of the exhibitions that you see on display and any temporary exhibitions such as Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Adam: So this is a rather unusual place. I have only just had a very brief look and I've never seen anything quite like it. So just explain to our listeners what it is that we're seeing, what what is this place? Claire: So the Natural History Museum at Tring is the brainchild of Lionel Walter Rothschild, who was a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Walter Rothschild, as as we call him, was gifted the museum by his parents as a 21st birthday present. Adam: That's quite a birthday, who gets a museum for their 21st? That's quite something. Claire: Yes, yeah, so, so the family were a hugely wealthy family and Walter's parents owned Tring Park Mansion, which is the the the the big house next door to the museum, which is now a performing arts school, the land of which was formerly a a big deer park, and the Woodland Trust land and our museum is all part of that sort of estate. Adam: And so this is a Natural History Museum. But as I was saying, it's not like when I've seen normally. So explain to me what it is that differentiates this from other museums people might be acquainted with. Claire: So we have over 4,000 taxidermied animals on display from all over the world, some of the finest examples of Victorian taxidermy in the world and you can see everything on display from dressed fleas all the way through to wallabies, large deers, birds from all over the world. It really is an absolutely amazing place. Adam: I've never heard of the species called dressed fleas. Is that a species or is it fleas which have got frocks on? Claire: So these are fleas that have little outfits on so our our particular dressed fleas have little sombreros. They're from Mexico dressed fleas. We're very fortunate to have them on display and they're they are some of the most popular things in the museum. Adam: *laughs* Extraordinary. Yeah, I'll go stop and have a look at those. Now, but there was, am I right in saying that that Walter Rothschild in the sort of posh manor, actually had weird animals rolling around, these aren't just stuffed animals, you know, live weird animals, unusual animals, just part of the park? Claire: Yeah, so to take you back a little bit, Walter Rothschild first became really interested in natural history when he was about 7 and and he then decided to set up the museum. So throughout his teenage years, he started collecting different animals, living and dead. And the park at Tring was home to a lot of the animals so in in the park were lots and lots of living animals that he he kind of just kept there roaming free, so he had things like rheas, cassowaries, ostriches, emus, kangaroos. Adam: I, I've seen a picture, I think I've seen a picture of him in a sort of horse drawn carriage, except it's drawn by zebras. Claire: Yeah, so so he decided to train zebras to draw his carriage. So he started off with one zebra and then sort of moved on to having three zebras and a and a pony and he actually took the carriage along Regent Street all the way through the mall in London to Buckingham Palace where where the zebras met the Queen, which was a bit sort of worrying for Rothschild because actually zebras are really difficult to train and quite flighty sort of animals so he's a bit worried about the Queen petting his zebras and and something going wrong, but fortunately it was all fine. The zebras did come out to Tring when they retired as well, so they were also sort of roaming about. I think what you need to imagine is Tring at the time was a really kind of provincial country town, there was a lot farming going on and the Rothschilds came with this, massive amounts of wealth, but they really embedded themselves within the local community and and did lots of, you know, really helped people out. But Walter then started introducing all these animals into the park. He was really interested in adaptation of of different species of animals, so he actually rented out the island of Alhambra in the Seychelles to protect the giant tortoises, but also in Tring you have all of these different exotic animals from all around the world and I can't imagine what it must have been like to just be an ordinary agricultural labourer living in Tring and having the opportunity to walk through the park and just se all these amazing animals that you wouldn't have had the opportunity to see because there's no television. Adam: It's a really interesting back story to it, but I wonder what you feel about the purpose of the museum and this collection now, when there's a sense I already feel a bit uncomfortable going, is this quite right to be watching stuffed animals, is this in keeping with our modern sensibilities? What's your view on that? Claire: So our mission really is to educate people about biodiversity and to to ensure that our future generations become advocates for the planet. So we do this by, you know, trying to instil the importance and the wonder and beauty of nature within our collections and tell people about the things that are vanishing. We have lots of extinct and endangered animals on display, which we highlight to our visitors and and you know, to try and get them to understand that they need to look after the natural world today, and obviously our collections are incredibly scientifically important. We have researchers come from all over the world to visit Tring and to study their collections and you know, really make a difference to to our planet in terms of understanding how populations of animals have increased or decreased through time. You know, sort of engage with people and educate people so they look after the planet going forwards. Adam: And explain to me a little bit about your relationship or the museum's relationship with the Woodland Trust, then. Claire: So we have a really good relationship with the Woodland Trust. We work hand in hand with them, we share our our sort of knowledge between both of our organisations and advocate for, for you know, the good work that we both do. Adam: I'm going to have a quick look around before we go off to the to the woodland itself. What's your favourite animal here? What's the favourite thing you think you'd direct me to? Claire: Oh my goodness, you've put me on the spot there. I mean, I really love all the animals in the museum. I think the thylacine is really worth going to have a look at. Adam: OK, thylacine, never heard of it. Claire: So the thylacine is an extinct animal. It's an example of something called convergent evolution, where it looks very much like a dog, but it's actually a marsupial. It lived in Australia. So that's upstairs in gallery 5. Adam: OK, that's where I'll be heading next. Thank you very much. Well, having finished my tour inside the museum, I'm off, it really is just across the road, to the woodland itself to meet my guide for the day. Grace: My name is Grace Davis, I'm an assistant site manager at the Woodland Trust, I help to manage our woods in Hertfordshire and Essex. Adam: So we're very lucky. It was raining when I left home. It is not raining, so I don't want to tempt fate but I do want to offer my thanks to whatever power that be. Where are we? Why are we here? Grace: We're at Tring Park in Hertfordshire. It's just next to the town of Tring. It's 130 hectares of grassland and woodland. It's famous for its chalk grassland and has been designated a SSSI. Adam: Right. And we were just walking down an avenue really weren't we and you were telling me they're lime trees because I couldn't spot it, but I did have a quick look on my app and just, maybe everyone else knows this, but apparently the nickname for Brits is the limeys, I think Australians call us limeys and it was because the lime trees were made, were used to make ships. And I think the Australians thought they weren't great wood for trees and sort of nicknamed us limeys. Anyway, there's a little bit of a side note. We passed some cows, rather docile cows. What what are they doing here? Grace: We've got a a number of cows that graze here most of the year, so they really help us to manage the scrub on the chalk grassland. If nature had its way, the the grassland here would eventually convert to be woodland, which isn't a bad thing but because of the SSSI designation of the chalk grassland here, and because it's a very rare habitat internationally, we really need to manage the scrub and any trees from from taking over, so the cattle are here to browse, to keep the the growth in check of the hawthorn, the blackthorn, the the scrubby species that really want to take over. Adam: And we passed, just a bit of practical information with people, we passed a little area where I saw a lot of tree planting going on, but also that's going to be a new car park is that right? Grace: That's right. So we've actually got Tring Park itself on a 400-year lease from the council after it was threatened in the nineties to be turned into a golf course, but we've also invested in this site by converting a patch of land to a car park for 50 spaces, and we hope that that car park will be open soon, very soon, and the one of the real benefits of it is it will provide a level access into the into the grassland, whereas at the moment people generally have to walk over the bridge across the very busy A41 but with the new car park, people will be able to park and walk straight into the grassland. So it will be great for anyone with a pushchair or mobility scooter. Adam: Fantastic. Now we're we're on a bit of a hill on this path going towards, past the cows on my right, going towards the trees themselves Right just before we head off there here's a Woodland Trust little bit of signage which I don't quite understand, it's a wooden post with a foot cut out of it. It is Walter's Wander. Walter moved into rooms at Magdalene College with a flock of kiwis, which were soon rehoused and cared for by a local taxidermist. Yeah, I'm not sure a taxidermist cares for animals much. I'm sure he cares, or she cares about her work, but I'm not sure that's the the verb of the job of a taxidermist. Anyway, yeah, so this is Walter's Wander, and it is Walter Rothschild. Grace: That's right yeah so this is this is showing a link between Tring Park and the museum of which Walter Rothschild is famous for having his his taxidermy there. Adam: I mean, he proper barmy. He, Magdalene College, he was a student at university and he brought with him a flock of kiwis. I mean, my kids went to university, they weren't allowed to have a kettle in their room, let alone a flock of kiwis. Better times, eh, let's bring those back! Right off we go. Let's go. This is this is, look, I'll get this wrong, is this hawthorn on the left? Grace: This is hawthorn, yes. Adam: Ohh top marks for Adam *laughs* Top marks for Adam, OK. Grace: We've got dog rose on the right, hawthorn again. Adam: Oh you see, you're you're showing off, just cause I got one right, you've gotta get more right than me. *both laugh* OK, off we go. Grace: So some of the plants that we have here growing on the chalk grassland have got fantastic names such as fairy flax, birdsfoot trefoil, lady's bedstraw, salad burnet and you know they've all got different colours, so white, yellows, purple. So if you visit here in spring or summer, there's just beautiful shades of colour all around the park. Adam: They're wildflowers are they? Grace: Yes, that's right and they're they they they they're specialist to chalk grassland. In fact, up to 40 species of chalk grassland plants can grow in one square metre, which is quite astonishing. Adam: I was taken by lady's bedstraw. Did ladies use it for their beds? Grace: I believe it was dried and used in mattresses. Adam: Blimey. Not just for ladies, gentlemen too, presumably. Grace: *laughs* Maybe Adam: Who knows, maybe it was only for ladies. Let's do some research. OK. So we're heading uphill as you can probably hear from my laboured breathing to a wooden gate up there and that that leads us into a more densely wooded area does it? Grace: Yes, that's right so that's the mature woodland up there. And we'll be we'll be leading on to the King Charles Ride, which is quite interesting for its connection with King Charles II. Adam: So what tell me whilst we're walking up, you can talk which will mean people can't hear me panting. Tell tell me about King Charles Ride. Grace: So Tring actually used to belong to King Charles II's wife. Catherine of Braganza, I think was her name. So King Charles is known to have visited the area and the avenue was named after him, and it's also heavily rumoured that his famous mistress Nell Gwynn came here with him on certain visits. She may well have lived in Tring during a typhus outbreak in London. There's also a monument here that is rumoured to be dedicated to her, which would make it the only public monument in the country to be dedicated to a royal mistress. Adam: Wow, good knowledge. Grace: I've got my notes *laughs* Adam: If only this comes up in Trivial Pursuit. I go where's the only monument to a royal mistress? And I'll get, I'll astound people at dinner parties. Good stuff. So we're taking a little break and I've turned around and actually it's it's beautiful looking back, we're up at the top of a a small valley we can see a road ahead of us that will be the A something, A41 says my expert and the sun is cutting through greyish clouds hitting the fields, green fields and the hills beyond the A41. And it looks really pretty. I mean, it's an interesting point, isn't it, that that people, the clue's in the name, the Woodland Trust, people feel it's about, get as many trees in the ground as possible. But it's not quite like that is it, because here in this particular patch you're doing what you can to prevent trees growing? Grace: That's right. I mean, scrub, scrub and woodland are obviously fantastic habitats for a range of species. But but chalk grassland really needs a low, low, low sward so a short height of the, Adam: Low sward, what's sward? Grace: Sward is the height of the the grass and the plants. So you can see it's quite low because the cattle are browsing it. So we need to keep that low. And the cattle will browse, they will eat like the young hawthorn and blackthorn and things coming through. They won't touch, really the the bigger, more established patches. But they'll keep the young stuff from coming through, and they'll reduce the competition of more dominant weeds like dandelion and things from from coming through. They they grow very fast and they will shade out and outcompete the slower growing rare chalk grassland species. Adam: And I mean, as we're sitting here and it's sort of mid-October-ish. We're starting to see the trees change colour aren't they, you can see in the lower bits they're not this uniform green. We've got reds and yellows and coppers just coming out. It is this time of change in the year, isn't it? Grace: That's right, yeah, it's quite beautiful, actually, at this time of year. Although we're saying we don't have the colours of the of the chalk grassland plants at the moment, but we do have the lovely changing colours of the trees. Yeah so this area here was enclosed about 300 years ago by by fencing, presumably, which which meant that a lot of the habitat was kept intact. It wasn't developed on and it's preserved the historic landscape as well of the area, and in fact it's, Tring Park is a Grade II historic parkland because of the ornamental park and garden features, which we'll we'll we'll see some of as we get to the top. Adam: Lovely. Have we rested enough? Grace: Yeah, let's push on. Adam: Push on. Grace: It will be muddy this next bit, but it's not for very long. Adam: OK. Ohh you can, you might be able to hear the sound effects of this getting very muddy. Grace: Yes, claggy. Adam: We've come into well, we're on a path, a little clearing and there is a mighty, mighty tree. But it's it's certainly dead. But it looks like something from a Harry Potter movie, The Witches or Macbeth, something like that. What's the story there? Grace: Well that's a tree perhaps it was struck by lightning, or it's just decayed you know, with old age. That's what we would call a veteran tree. So it's got wonderful cavity at the base there, it's got fungi growing on it. It's got the the top is all split off. It's open, open at the top for birds to nest in. You know, we we really do like to keep as much deadwood on a site as possible. It's just fantastic for invertebrates, bugs, beetles, fungi. There's about 2,000 invertebrate species that are reliant on dead or decaying woods, so you know, we're really working at the at the base of the ecosystem to get those small creatures into the woodland ecosystem fo

Sheltering from the rain under a yew tree in a Shrewsbury churchyard, we chat to 'Tree Pilgrim' Martin Hügi, the Trust's outreach manager in the South East. He's taken a four-month sabbatical to walk from Land's End to John O'Groats and visit thousands of incredible trees along the way. Hear Martin on awe-inspiring trees that have rendered him speechless, the vital Ancient Tree Inventory that helped plan the route, the value of 'plugging in' to nature and what's in his kit bag! We also hear from Adele, who explains that old trees like those on Martin's pilgrimage are not protected or prioritised like our built heritage. Find out what you can do to help. 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: Today I am off to meet the Tree Pilgrim, which is the moniker of Martin Hugi, who is doing a proper marathon pilgrimage from Land's End to John O'Groats using the Woodland Trust's Ancient Tree Inventory, so you're gonna visit a huge number of ancient and veteran trees, something like 6,500 of them he's expecting along his walk and I caught up with him in Shrewsbury in Shropshire, which is just on the River Severn about 150 miles or thereabouts, north, north west of London, and I caught up with him at a rather rainy churchyard. This is very unusual because normally I join people on walks, but actually you've been walking for what, what day is it? Martin: I'm on day... 79 today Adam: You had to think about that! Martin: I had to think about that. Adam: Yeah. So this is so you've actually taken a break and you've come into Shrewsbury and we're, we're we are in a green space in a churchyard where, now we're we're here for a special reason. Why? Martin: So last night I was giving a talk, talking about ancient trees and the the need for greater protection and just telling my story of what I've been up to. Adam: Right, well, first of all tell me a bit about this pilgrimage you're going on. Martin: Yeah. So I'm calling it an ancient tree pilgrimage and it is a walk from Land's End to John O'Groats and I spent 12 months planning meticulously a route between some of the most amazing trees that I could fit into a north-south route and working out the detail of how I wassgoing to get to those trees via other trees on the Ancient Tree Inventory. Adam: So the Land's End to John O'Groats, which that walk, famous sort of trip which is called LEGO for short, is it? Martin: LEJOG, or JOGLE if you go the other way. Adam: LEJOG, right OK, LEJOG. Martin: Land's End to John O'Groats. Adam: OK. It's long if you do it straight, but you've gone, gone a sort of wiggly woggly way, haven't you? Because you're going actually via interesting trees. So how many miles is that gonna be? Martin: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, it's if you're going to go a sort of more classic route, it would be something like 1,080 or 1,100 sort of miles. The route that I've planned is 2,077 miles. Adam: Wow. Martin: So it's double. Adam: 2,077 mile walk. Martin: Yeah, I had estimated doing 18 miles a day. That would be, that was my average. I'd sort of planned rough stops where I thought I might be able to get to. I'm more doing about 13 miles a day, which is not a lot less, but it's, I'm spending more time with the trees. And I, we also we lost our our dog on the day that I was setting off. We went down to Penzance to start and we took our our old family dog with us and he was very old and and elderly and he actually died on the morning that I was going to set off. So we just drove back home and didn't fancy starting again for another couple of weeks. So if you can be behind on a pilgrimage, I was already 2 weeks behind, but actually, I'm on a pilgrimage, so it's it's it's about the journey. Adam: Would you say you're a religious person? Martin: Not in the classic sense of an organised religion, but I, I do have a spiritual side to me for sure. Yeah. Adam: And what difference then, you you talk about this tree pilgrimage and it not being about the distance, it's about the journey, which, you know, one often hears. What, if anything, have you learnt about your feelings for the natural world, or what you think it can offer you, or what you can offer it during this journey so far? Martin: Yeah, I think I'm learning about my connection with nature and ancient trees and the sites that they sit in as being good places to access that connection. So one of the stories that I tell is about meeting the Majesty Oak in Fredville Park in Kent. And we went with a conservation trip with work and it's just such an incredible tree at it's 12.5 metre girth and a maiden oak. And it just goes straight up and it's just it's, it's, it's bulk, it's sheer dominance and size literally blew my mind to the point where I was speechless for a couple of minutes and I wasn't the only one, and because I think it it just it takes you out of the ordinary state of 'this is what a tree is' and it put me into a state of, this is something different, and it was a a real feeling of awe and I get that from ancient trees, I sometimes I will feel awe and that's a a rare feeling in my life and potentially a lot of people's lives. And I think that's well, that's what I'm seeking, I suppose, but it's almost like a gateway feeling for other potential feelings that you can cultivate around nature and trees. Just things like respect and gratitude, and I've actually found myself thanking some of the trees because of, they're just full, so full of life and and they're persisting and the resilience and feeling actual gratitude that they persist and doing what they do. Adam: And you must meet a lot of people on your walk. 70 odd days in so far, they must ask you what on Earth you're doing and must give you some sort of response. What, have people been surprised, shocked, do they think you're nuts? Do they go 'can I join you'? What's been the response? Martin: All of those things, I suppose. Yeah, I'll, I'll sort of tell them what I'm doing and and as soon as I get to Ancient Tree Inventory, I get a blank look. Adam: OK. Well, you say lots of people don't know about this, let's talk about this. First of all, what is it, and then how do people get involved? Martin: Yes. So it is a citizen science project, it's an open publicly accessible data set of ancient trees across the UK. Adam: And so I could, I mean, for instance, today if we think we found this ancient tree, we would go on the register and go, here it is, we think it's a, you know, a an ancient oak or what whatever it is and we measure its girth, its its width at about do you do it about 3 metres high? Is that what you meant to do? Martin: It's 1.5 metres. Adam: So only twice wrong *laughs* there we are, well a good margin of error. Yeah, 3 metres is too high. No, I'm short as it is, overblown idea of how tall I am. So 1.5 metres high you sort of take a tape measure and you measure it and you say you you think you you know what it is, you give it a good go and there's lots of online apps you can help you. And you sort of make comments about the tree. You sort of say it's in this sort of condition, but you don't have to be an expert, it is just fine to give it give it a go. Martin: Absolutely and and actually you don't need a tape measure, you can you can make an estimate and if you don't know what the tree is exactly or don't know what it is at all, you can still add it to the inventory and it will, it won't appear as a public facing record at that point, but it will show up to an ancient tree verifier, a volunteer ancient tree verifier. It will show up as an unverified tree and and I I am an ancient tree verifier, since 2008, and I'll be able to see that there's an unverified tree here and I can go along, I can say, well, it is an oak and I can measure it if I can measure it, if it's possible. And I can record other details about the tree like its veteran characteristics. Adam: So already, I mean I don't get too bogged down into all of this, but I get notable trees like an event has happened under them, and there's lots of amazing trees where the Magna Carta was signed under one the Tolpuddle Martyr, the first ever union was created under a tree, so there's lots of historically important trees like that. But the the difference between veteran and ancient, is there a clear distinction between those? Martin: No, in a way it's a subjective thing, but there is guidelines. There are, for different species, there are graphs saying if it's over this sort of girth you you would, it would be erring into an ancient tree. And and different species and different growth rates so there'll be different sizes. My, so a sort of colloquial definition is it's a tree that makes you go wow, would be an ancient tree and be that awe inspiring sort of feeling. But then also an ancient tree is one where you can see that it's been through multiple stages of growth, and what you'd say as a development phase for a tree, so an oak tree for example, you'd be able to see that it's it's, it's gone up and it's done it's mature oak, it's lost limbs and then it's shrunk back down again and then it's gone back up again and then it's come back down again and it's gone back up again and you can see that history in the shape and form of an ancient tree. So an ancient tree is a veteran tree. It's just that it's been a veteran multiple times and it's gone through them. Adam: And presumably it's different for different species, because I mean, we're looking at a couple of yews, I mean, a yew tree can last 2,000 years. So what might be old for a yew tree is very different, might be old for a cherry tree, for instance. So you you can't apply the same rule for all trees, presumably. Martin: You can apply that same thinking and principle to all trees that, has it been through multiple stages of life and development. Yew trees for sure are some of the oldest living trees. Something that's really stood out to me in Powys, in Wales and, is how they will put roots down into the inside of their decaying stems. Roots go down, they're called adventitious roots, and it's literally feeding off of the decaying body of itself and then those adventitious roots become stems, and I've seen this over and over, and again in some of the oldest yews that, the internal stems are adventitious roots and the outside of the tree is decayed and and hollow and and so in theory a yew tree is potentially immortal. You know, they just go on and on because you you can see some of these big stems that will have adventitious roots inside them, but that big stem might have been an adventitious route originally, so they're just incredible trees and and all trees will do that. Adam: And so why is it important that this thing exists? I mean, why why make a register of ancient trees, apart from the fact you might want like quite like an excuse to go around the country listing them, which I I get that might be fun, but why is it important? Martin: I think there are, there's there's several reasons, really. I mean, apart from, I mean a simple one would be cultural and social history and the heritage as part of our our common collective heritage. But then there's also from a some more sort of biological view, they are old genetics, they're old genes that have persisted, so they're adapted to their conditions, who knows how many offspring they've generated and the genetics that that tree came from, you know, going back into millennia, so I think they're an important reserve of genetic history. They're also nodes of undisturbed soils, so they obviously clearly have been there such a long time that the roots and the mycorrhizal associations under the ground and the complexity of life that is in that area, it's like a node of of life and of part of our landscape that hasn't changed and that is an incredibly important place, akin to ancient woodland soils. Adam: And the whole the whole idea about ancient woodland itself is that you can't replace tree for tree, you can't knock down an ancient tree and and put in a new tree and it be as environmentally beneficial, so it's surely it's important because if we know about how to modify our landscape, if we're, whether where we should build new homes or or or anything, then actually it's important to know what we're disturbing, you can only do that if you know what's there. Martin: Absolutely, yeah and I mean *church bells ring* sorry that's just distracted me *laughs*. Adam: That's fine, distracted, distracted, slightly by the the ominous bells of the church in whose yard we are sitting in at the moment. So, you know, we're we're under a beech, you might hear the rain. We're cowering from sort of fairly light rain and in this churchyard and just listening to those those bells, anyway, they've they've gone, they've gone so. Martin: It's where Charles Darwin was baptised. Adam: In this church? Charles Darwin? Well, that, that raises a really interesting point, because also I know the local community were trying to protect an oak. And they called it the Charles Darwin Oak. You know, it's always good to have a name, isn't it? And they called it that because they think, well, you know, Charles Darwin could legitimately have played under this oak. It's old enough, and it's where he was baptised and everything. And it raises this issue, doesn't it, about people's connections to trees and local communities' connections to trees and it, I mean, I, from, as an outsider, it feels that that is becoming more a thing more a thing that people talk about, just regular people do feel it's important to have this connection. Martin: I I think it's it's it really is yeah. I think people are now realising much more how the trees and the ecosystems around them actually provide us with the atmosphere and the our ability to live on this planet. It really is such a fundamental part of being human and survival to look after these green spaces that it's it's, you know, people are, people do realise that I think people do recognise that. Adam: It it brings us on to the debate about the environment and protection. It was interesting, on the way here, I was reading an article by Jonathan Friedland, the great writer, who was talking about the ecological debate, saying they've said the the ecological sort of lobby group have the argument right, but they're using the wrong words and and he was saying that you know that that their argument isn't framed in the right way, but it feels like this is a super important moment, maybe a flex point, one doesn't want to overemphasise these things, sort of, but does feel that, I mean, right this week we are seeing heatwaves, I mean sort of properly dangerous heatwaves in southern Europe. Flooding, there was flooding on the motorway as I came here, so we have extremes of weather which feel very unusual for this sort of early summery type period. How worried are you about the environment and our ability to actually do something to protect it and our place in it? Martin: I am confident that we have the know-how and the ability as humans to change our ways to a more sustainable way of living in harmony. I think that is changing. I think the economics has got to be part of this debate and the conversation, I I read a fantastic book in 2008 by Eric Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth. I don't know if you've heard of this and looking at the environment as complex adaptive systems, but he was also saying how the economy is a complex adaptive system and evolution of economy, evolution is a, you you can't predict a thing what's going to happen sometimes and Adam: No, I understand. And that's interesting to the, that the economy is itself an ecology and it adapts to the environment that it's facing. And I agree, I used to do a series for the BBC called Horizons when we travelled the world looking at technology. And I tend to the panicky, I have to say, and I thought this wouldn't be good for me when I'm looking at big challenges facing the world. And actually, I was really drawn to the fact that there are tech solutions to all sorts of issues, and it's often the money that's preventing, you go, 'we can fix it, it's just not commercially viable'. No one wants to pay to do this at the moment, but if oil prices went through the roof, suddenly this alternative would be commercially viable. So it was, we talk a lot about technology, sometimes it is the economics of it which are preventing us from doing things and the economics change, don't they? So that that might be. Martin: They do and it's something that is not predictable because there's so many moving components, there's so many interactions, there's so many feedback loops that, I mean, that's something that intrigues me about complex systems is that, the more complexity you have, the more feedback loops, the more agents that are interacting with each other in a system, the more resilient it is to change, but it can shift if if you if you get some events that are just too too much or you you degrade the amount of complexity then that system becomes less stable and that's the, that's the danger with, potentially what we're doing with trees and our environment, our, if you like a tree is an emergent property of the soil, it's it's an expression of of of what, of plant life and it's it started as algae coming out of warm freshwater, sea, freshwater in, 600 million years ago and and partnering with fungi to make, to have lichens. And then you get soil and then other things, other more complex plants evolve and then we've ended up with trees and they're like the, an emergent property of complex systems of the soil. Adam: So we're talking about people's interaction with the environment. I should explain some of the symphony of sound we're hearing. So we we had the church bells, we had the rain above us. And I think there is a charity Race for Life with, thousands of people have emerged, in in a bit of green land we were going to actually walk through. And I think there's a sort of charity run going on, which is why you might hear, some big blaring music in the background, which is not as quiet a spot as we thought we might have ended up with, but does show the amenity value of these open green spaces. It's just rather a lot of people have chosen to use it on, on this particular day. One of the other things I just want to talk to you about as well while we're talking about this debate, and I know you talk on on behalf of yourself, not the Trust, and you're taking a sabbatical so these are your views, but given the debate we're all having, it feels to me that we talk a lot about armageddon. And I know from talking to people, you know, my family, they they sort of just disengage with after a while it just becomes background noise. And I wonder if you have an idea or an insight into how to talk about these issues to explain that they are potentially the difference between humans surviving and not surviving and yet not just sound like, some crazy guy screaming into the wind and also to stop people going 'well, if that's the way it is then you know what am I gonna do I, I just better carry on because I can't do anything about it'. Is there a key that we're missing you feel, or an emphasis that we have wrong in engaging with this topic? Martin: I don't know if I would say I have an answer to whether it's wrong or not, or the way we engage with it, but I think for me the the key is connection to nature and encouraging people and you've got to start young, I think, getting children through forest school perhaps, getting them out outside and experiencing nature because that's where nature connection comes from. And you don't need a, you don't need an ancient tree to to give you a sense of awe. I mean you I I can and ppeople can find awe in a tiny flower, but it's j

Discover the fascinating ancient art of coppicing as we visit Priory Grove in Wales' Wye Valley, where the technique is still practised on a small scale to benefit both people and wildlife. We meet site manager Rob and contractor Joe to learn more about the coppicing carried out here, and how this interaction between people and nature has enabled the two to develop and evolve in tandem. Also in this episode, find out how an unfortunate end for ash trees resulted in a fantastic sea of wild garlic, the team's efforts to encourage dormice, bats, pine martens and other wildlife and which tree to identify by likening the trunk to elephants' feet! 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 off to Priory Grove, which is next door really to the River Wye near Monmouth in Wales to meet the site manager Rob there who's gonna give me a bit of a tour . It's predominantly made up of ancient woodland and provides a wide range of habitats for wildlif e. T hings like r oe, fallow deer, they're known to forage throughout the area, and a wide variety of bird species, including the tawny owl, s parrowhawk, and the great spotted woodpecker, which can all be seen o n the wing here. All very exciting and I 've just got to find it a nd find R ob. Rob : Hello, I'm Rob Davi e s, site m anager, S outh E ast Wales. Adam : So tell me a little bit about where we are and why this is significant. Rob : This is P riory Grove woodland. It's quite a large site on the outskirts of Monmouth, but nobody really knows what its history is. It's it's called Priory Grove, presumably because it was attached to one of the monastic estates round here. And that probably accounts for its survival as one of the one of the largest ancient w oodlands next to Monmouth. And it did retain a lot of its coppice woodland, which is quite important for biodiversity. Adam : Right. And what we're , I mean, we're standing by some f elled, are these oak ? Rob : These are oak. Yes, oak, oak in length. Adam : So wh y w hy have these been fel led ? Rob : This is part of the c oppice restoration programme , so coppicing on this site has been a management tool that's been used for hundreds if not thousands of years in this area and it's used to produce products like this, this oak that will go into timber framing and furniture and a ll those good things. And also , firewood is part of the u nderwood and the the the h azel and the the the understory cop pice . So products for people and in the past it was used for all kinds of things before we ha d plastic. But it's still very useful , and so because it d idn't cease until recently on this site , t he animals and plants and the fauna that relies upon this method that have evolved with it essentially in the last 10,000 years or so since we've been managing woods in th is w ay , still are present here on this site or in the local area. So if you continue the cycle you continue this interaction with the wildlife and you can help to reverse the biodiversity declines. So it's very holistic, really this management technique. But it does mean that t o make space for the coppice regrowth , b ecause trees don't grow under trees, you know it needs the light . The light needs to be there for the copp ice to come up again. You have to t ake out some of these mature oaks that were planted 1 5 0 , 200 years ago, w ith the intention of being used in the future. So we're plant ing things and we're carrying out the plans , w e're bringing them to fruition , w hat people enacted a couple of hundred years ago. Adam : It it's interesting, isn't it , bec ause it it it i s an ancient woodland, but that doesn't mean it's an untouched woodland, because for hundreds of years it's it's been managed. Man has had a hand in this a nd not only that , commerce has had a hand in that, so often I think we think of these things as a dichotomy. You have ancient woodland, nice, pristine sort of nature, and then you have sort of horrible invasive commerce. Actually, I think what's interesting about t his site is that there isn't that dichotomy. They both work in tandem, is that fair ? Rob : That's right, it's a false dichotomy. So the reason these wo o ds have survived is because they were use d for people, and because of the way they're managed, coppicing and thinning is quite a sensitive technique , i t allows space for nature to be present and to develop and evolve in tandem, so they're not mutually exclusive. Adam : Yes. So tell me about c oppicing is an important part of this site , t ell me a little bit about what you're doing at the moment w ith that. Rob: Yeah , s o we've h ad a grant actually from the Wye Valley AONB from , supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund , to to do some cop picing work on stands that were cop pic ed about 20 years ago. So we're continuing that cycle. And we've been working with a company called Wye Coppice Community Interest C ompany, Wye Coppice CIC, and they're quite developed in, in the Wye Valley area. And we formed a good relationship with them and through them we've been able to do half a hectare of coppicing up on the other slope higher up in the site there . I f you like we can go up and meet Joe? Adam : That would be wonderful. Yeah . You you lead o n I will follow. Well, you can hear from this I'm a bit out of breath, we've claimed , OK , I'll be embarrassed to say it's a h i ll , a small incline, but we 've come across this stand of of fell ed trees. So just tell me a bit about what's going on here. Rob : Exactly. So all these stumps you can see scattered through out the stand. This is the coppice, so it's cut down to just above base ground level there now and it will just regrow. So it's kind of a natural defence strategy that we're just exploiting. So it's it's been used to, it's , you know, since it evolved things like h azel especially , it' s used to being browsed off by animals , t he animals move on and then the tree just comes back. So it's like a p hoenix strategy it comes back, back up again. We're just exploiting that. So we'll cut the tree to base and then we'll protect the regrowth from the brows ing animals and then the tree will come again. Adam : Right, a nd this is the work done by Joe ? Rob : Yeah , this y eah s o this is the work done by Joe Weaver. Joe's just down the end there actually if you want to come and meet him . Adam : OK, let's go have it l et's go meet him. Ohh I've got stuck. OK, so Joe, this is all your handiwork. Joe : It is, yes. Adam : Tell me a bit about what what it is you do then. Joe : S o I run Wye Coppice CIC, we ' re a coppice contracting company and working with Woodland Trust, Natural Resource Wales and W ildlife T rusts throughout the Wye Valley a nd we're embarking on a project to restore areas of the Wye Valley to restore , do a coppice restoration project for for various organisations throughout the Wye Valley. The what you se e , what you see here is about 1 1/ 2 acres of cut down trees with 7 or 8 stand ar ds . Adam : What are standards ? Joe : The standards are the trees that we've left behind, so, so they're the large, they're the larger trees . Adam : Oh, I see r ight. So you wouldn't be cop picing, t hese are very well established big trees , y ou don't cop pice trees like that , y ou c op pice quite small trees, don't you? Joe : Yes, so all the small diameter understory trees we've cut down to ground level and and they will, they will resprout and grow back again. We can then come back in 10 years and recut them and have a healthy supply of continue , a continual healthy supply of pole wood. Adam : And yeah , s o what you're trying to get with copp icing is sort of quite it's quite small diameter wood, is that correct? Joe : Yes , generally speaking, so this is a restoration project y ou can see this first cut is fairly large diameter. And so most of this will go to make charcoal but generally speaking after 10, ma ybe 15 y ears of growth, we'll have pol e s about sort of thumb size and maybe up to about 50 pence diameter. Adam : Right. And that's ideal size, is it? Joe : And that's a really good size for products like bean poles, hedging stakes and binders that go on the top of naturally laid h edging a nd then various other pol e wood applications. Adam : And and when you see a coppice d tree , evidence that it's been cop p i c ed, there's , I'm trying to look over t here , is is this where you see lots of different branches actually coming out from the stump in the ground? That's evidence that's been cop pic ed, cause it not just one t hing grows , lots of them ? Joe : That's right. So you can, if you have one b irch tree standing up, for example, you can cut that down to the ground, and when you come back in a few months ' time, you'll notice about 5 or 6 shoots coming from that one stump at the bottom of the ground. So if we can p rotect that from deer browsing a nd rabbit browsing, then those stems, those five or six shoots will grow up into individual stems that we can then use us e i n pole wood products. Adam : It's odd, isn't it t hat that happens, though, that you chop down one sort of main stem and you get four or five coming back , t hat's sort of an odd natural thing to happen, isn't it? Joe : It is. I think it's the tree's response to the stress of being cut down. So it sort of puts out a lot of i t puts a lot of energy into regrowing new growth to try to survive because essentially these broadleaf species, trees, they're they're forever growing , you can cut them down t hey'll regrow , c ut them down again, they'll regrow again. So it's a constant cycle of of regrowth. Adam : Y eah it's it's like sort of, you know, thumbing their nose at you i sn't it , going well , y ou cut me down we ll I'm gonna come back fivefold. You know, that's it's a sort of really funny response. Joe : Indeed. But we can reap the benefits of that. Adam : Yeah n o, no, it's , I get , I get why that's g ood . A nd coppicing itself , t hat, and that's an ancient art, isn't it? Joe : It has , certainly here in the Wye Valley it was practised at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to produce charcoal to power the I ndustrial R evolution until coal was i introduc ed and so it happened for hundreds and hundreds of years here. Adam : Right. So you think, do you think I mean there's no need for you to be an historical expert on the history of c oppicing , but do you think that's the first big sign of it happening , sort o f I ndustrial R evolution time? Joe : Certainly around here it is ye ah , and there's some of the co upes that we've cut , s ome of the coppice areas that we've cut here, we've found evidence of charcoal hearths. So you can see flat areas with bits of charcoal sort of sliding down the bank. Adam : So that would be ancient sites in here , w ell, ancient , I mean, a few 100 years old of them actually making charcoal in this woodland? Joe : Yes, in this w oodland , throughout the Wye Valley all the way throughout the Wye V alley here, yes. Adam : Amazing . N ow s o your company, it's not just a traditional sort of private business , it is a a different sort of form. Just explain how that works. Joe : So we run a c ommunity interest company and that allows us to access grant funding if we need to. Essentially, we' re run as a private business, but we are able to do community outreach work as well and that's part of what we do is to try to educate people about sustainable woodland management. Adam : And how did you get involved in all of this then ? Did you grow up as a boy going I want to chop down t rees to make fences. Joe : No, I didn't . I was walking in the Dolomites , I saw two stoats fighting and thought woodland life is for me *laughs*. Adam : Ok , well, fantastic , n ever heard that , so inspired by the the battle between two stoats and the and and the Do lomite s . That's fantastic, but a hard life, I w ould have thought t o run a business to , I mean it's physical work anyway , but t hat's my perception from the outside , is it hard work ? Joe : It it can be very difficult, it does have its benefits. Obviously it keeps you fit and it gets you outside but yes, it is a hard life and and you know it's it's quite a technical job as well and the training is expensive so we're trying to introduce a training programme as well t hrough through our through our business Wye Coppice to try to get young people interested i n woodland management. Adam : And do you find that people sometimes don't understand or or perhaps disagree with the fact that commerce and nature can be actually mutually beneficial? Do you find that an issue at all ? Joe : Yes I do. Yes, and we're we're we're always willing to stop and talk to dog walkers especially . S hortly after COP26, we had two dog walkers co me past and shout at us for chopping the trees down, after sitting down with them and having a cup of tea, they b ought a bag of charcoal off us. Adam: Right ok very good there we are. Y ou're b ringing them round one by one, one by one, those customers are coming over. W ell brilliant and we've had not a bad day . I thought I might have to put my wet weather gear on, but it's been it's been OK . A nyway w ell, t hat's brilliant thank you very much. T hat's been really interesting. Joe : Thank you. Adam : So we've got this stand of trees we're looking at R ob. A c ouple couple of oak. Did you say that was a lime ? Rob: That's a lime yeah . Adam: That's the lime , that that one with lots of ridges in it is that the lime? Rob: That's it, yeah . Adam : That's the lime. So why have you left these trees? Is there particular reasons you didn't take these ones out? Rob : Yeah . So these as you can see , these are all mature trees and so y ou don't take these decisions lightly. So when we co ppice this sort of half a football field area here, there were thirteen of these big mature trees, trees y ou can barely get your hands around as they're so large , tak en a couple of hundred years to grow, so you 've got to be quite careful and quite selective, although you need the light. There's an old adage about oak trees , i t goes something like this that to f e ll an oak tree you need three things. You need a good eye , a s harp axe and a cold heart because these trees, you know they've been grown and nurtured and developed, and they're impressive life forms. And so it's not something you do without considering it very carefully so so you can see a couple of trees in here which are a couple of oaks, good size , but they're full of i vy, very dense i vy and that's very good for wintering bats. For h ibernation, or for potentially summer roosting. Adam : So the bats would live just amongst the Ivy , t hey'd sleep a mongst the ivy? Rob : Yeah whe n it gets as dense as this, when it's really all knotted , entwined, there's lots of gaps behind it. You could stick your hand in and find little cavities and several species of ba t , especially p ipistrelle , they they will hibernate over winter in this kind of g rowth. So you really don't want to be disturbin g this . Adam : Right . And and what w hat's , i s there something specific about li m e that wildlife like is there a ny particular wildlife ? Rob: Well, it's good for bees. It's good good good pollen. Adam : You get b eehives in there? Oh I see, the pollen itself is good. Rob: They like the flowers . Yeah yeah it produces lots of the small leaved lime i t produces lots of good flowers and and it will attract aphids which is actually a food source for for dormice in the summer. So they they feed on the fee d on the lime sap, you know if you park your car under a lime tree, you'll get this very sticky kind of substance coming off it. Adam: Yes, yeah , yeah . Of course it does. Yes. Yeah , yeah . Rob : So that attracts aphids , attracts the dormice, i t's good for insects who like nectar as well. So it's a it's a very valuable tre e a nd and you know Adam : So interesting it's it's not valuable commercially, it's valuable for nature. Rob : Yeah , absolutely. And it's quite it's quite a special tree in the in the Wye V alley, it doesn't occur much outside this area n aturally, a nd it's k i nd o f an ancien t woodland indicator in this part of the world, perhaps not officially, but it's a. Adam : OK. Any other trees we 've got here? Rob : Yeah . The rest of the t rees, then are be e ch. Adam : Right a nd you've kept those w hy? Rob : Yeah , because you can see if you look at this one here, it's got quite a few cavities in it at the base at the top, beech tends to do that. It tends to take , form little cavities, rot holes and ways in, and that's w ay s in for fungus a nd then they eat out and hollow the tree. So the potential for harbour ing bats again is very high in these trees. Without sort of going into them, doing some invasive exploration, you can't tell, but it's it's very high potential for bats. So again, bats, all species of bats in this country are protected under law because they've had massive declines like a lot of woodland species. And so we'll do everything we can to retain that habitat. Adam : It's it's the Field of Dreams, philosophy. You you build i t and they w ill come. Rob : Yeah , yeah . This as long as it stays there, it'll always be valuable as habitat a nd so at least then, there are future sort of veteran trees within this stand . Adam : It is interesting you you've already , I mean, we've only done a short part of this walk so far, but you talked about whoever was managing this woodland 100 years ago knew what they were talking about. And I think that's fascinating that we don't know who that person is or who who they, who those people were. And in 100 years time , people won't know who you were p. sumably , but the the evidence of your work will be here. They'll go y eah , that was a good bloke who did all this and left us with something. Rob: That's it, y ou you don't plant trees for y ourself , y ou plant trees for the future gen eration so you know, I won't see the o aks I plant develop. I'll be dead long before they mature and it's the same for the person who did this . B ut you can see the ones we took out, the ones I took out and selected were tall and straight. And that means that the co ppice is well managed , because there wa s enough light for the h azel in the understory to c ome up straight away . If you cut h azel to the ground and you protect it , in a couple of years, it'll be way above six, eight foot and it 'll just continue to get higher and higher over the next few years. And what that does is it shades the stem of the oak and it prevents side branching. So you get this very tall initial first s tem . And that's what you're looking for. And that's what these trees had. So this would have clearly been cared for and these trees have been selected, they we re on a journey from the moment they were planted. Adam : OK. And just on my journey of education about trees, how do , what , the y're be e ch, I wouldn't be able to spot that m yself, what tells you the y' r e be e ch? Rob: It's a smooth trunk. If you look at this one here now you can see I always think of them as sort of elephan t l egs. T hey're grey and they're tall and they're smooth and they quite often have sort of knobbly bits on the base like an elephant's foot. A nd if you go through a stand of pure be e ch, it looks like it looks like a stand of elephants ' feet, really tall , grey stems and these big huge buttress roots. Adam : Fantastic. I am never going to forget that and I will always think of elephants when I look at a be e ch , a b rilliant b rilliant clue. Thank you. Right. So where we off to now? Rob: We'll walk around s o you can see the top of the co u p e and just see the extent of it and and then w