The Woodland Trust is the largest woodland conservation charity in the United Kingdom and is concerned with the creation, protection, and restoration of native woodland heritage. It has planted over 50 million trees since 1972.
Beaminster is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England, approximately 15 miles (24 km) northwest of the county town Dorchester. It is sited in a bowl-shaped valley near the source of the small River Brit. The population of Beaminster parish was recorded as 3,177 in the 2021 census.
Oxford Brookes University is a public university in Oxford, England. It is a relatively new new university, having received university status through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. The university was named after its first principal, John Henry Brookes, who played a major role in the development of the institution.
In the United Kingdom, ancient woodland is that which has existed continuously since 1600 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The practice of planting woodland was uncommon before those dates, so a wood present in 1600 is likely to have developed naturally.
Salcey Forest is a fragment of a former medieval hunting forest east of the village of Hartwell, between Northampton and Newport Pagnell in Northamptonshire. It is managed by Forestry England and to promote biodiversity, and is also commercially exploited for timber products. The eastern third of the forest, an area of 159.6 hectares, is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
Frei Paul Otto was a German architect and structural engineer noted for his use of lightweight structures, in particular tensile and membrane structures, including the roof of the Olympic Stadium in Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics.
West Dorset is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Edward Morello, a Liberal Democrat.
John Makepeace OBE FCSD is a British furniture designer and maker. Makepeace was born in Solihull, Warwickshire. He bought Parnham House, Dorset in 1976 and founded the Parnham Trust and the School for Craftsmen in Wood to provide integrated courses in design, making and management for aspiring furniture-makers, alongside but separately from his own furniture workshops. Makepeace ceased running the Trust in 2000 when it moved to the new campus at Hooke Park under a new director who handed the premises over to the Architectural Association, the international school of architecture, for their practical modules. Makepeace sold Parnham House in 2001 to Michael and Emma Treichl, who carried out extensive renovations, before the fire in 2017 and Michael's suicide. Makepeace works predominantly for private clients, but previously designed furniture for the retail market including Habitat, Heals and Liberty's.
Hooke Court is a 17th-century manor house in the parish of Hooke in Dorset, England. It is a Grade II* listed building built around the time of the English Civil War.
Chailey is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located 7 miles north of Lewes, on the A272 road from Winchester to Canterbury. The Prime Meridian passes just to the east of Chailey.
Sir Edmund "Ted" Happold was a structural engineer and founder of Buro Happold.
A gridshell is a structure which derives its strength from its double curvature, but is constructed of a grid or lattice.
The United Kingdom, being in the British Isles, is ideal for tree growth, thanks to its mild winters, plentiful rainfall, fertile soil and hill-sheltered topography. In the absence of people, much of Great Britain would be covered with mature oaks as well as savannah-type of plains, except for Scotland. Although conditions for forestry are good, trees face threats from fungi, parasites and pests. Nowadays, about 13% of Britain's land surface is wooded. European countries average 39%, but this varies widely from 1% (Malta) to 66% (Finland). As of 2021, government plans call for 30,000 hectares to be reforested each year. Efforts to reach these targets have attracted criticism for planting non-native trees, or trees that are out of place for their surroundings, leading to ecological changes.
Scotland is ideal for tree growth, thanks to its mild winters, plentiful rainfall, fertile soil and hill-sheltered topography. As of 2019 about 18.5% of the country was wooded. Although this figure is well below the European Union (EU) average of 43%, it represents a significant increase compared to the figure of 100 years previously: in 1919 it was estimated that only 5% of the country's total land area was covered in forest. The Scottish Government's Draft Climate Change Plan has set an aim of increasing coverage to 21% of Scotland by 2032, with the rate of afforestation rising to 15,000 hectares per year by 2024.
Palmers Rough is a local nature reserve and park located in Shirley, Solihull. It covers an area of approximately 7.3 hectares and consists of two separate woodland blocks; Palmers Coppice to the east, and Squires Coppice to the west. They are separated by open grassland and include for two football pitches and a small children's playground. A wide range of plants and animals makes Palmers Rough an important urban space and was therefore granted local nature reserve status in 2000. The presence of Palmers Rough is noted within the Domesday Book, and suggests that the woodland dates back over 900 years.
The Clyde Valley Woodlands National Nature Reserve (NNR) comprises six separate woodland sites in the Clyde Valley region of South Lanarkshire, Scotland. These six sites are located along a 12 km section of the River Clyde and its tributaries, and lie close to built-up areas such as Hamilton and Lanark on the southern outskirts of Greater Glasgow. The sites can be easily accessed by about two million people living in the surrounding urban areas, making the reserve unique amongst Scotland's NNRs, most of which tend to be located in more remote areas. The six sites are:
Since 2017, the Woodland Trust has led 70 United Kingdom organizations in the call for a Charter for Trees, Woods and People.
Parnham House is a sixteenth-century Grade I listed house located about 1 mile (1.6 km) from Beaminster in Dorset, England. Historic England describes the house as "exceptionally important". In April 2017 the house was badly damaged by fire.
The 2020 Wareham Forest fire was a wildfire in Wareham Forest, Dorset, in May 2020. It destroyed over 220 Hectares of the heathland, and was described "one of the most devastating fires in Dorset, in living memory" by Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service.
The National Forest for Wales is a long-term forestation programme by the Welsh Government, aiming to form a network of woodland throughout Wales.
