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.
Forest gardening is a low-maintenance, sustainable, plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers to build a woodland habitat. Forest gardening is a prehistoric method of securing food in tropical areas. In the 1980s, Robert Hart coined the term "forest gardening" after adapting the principles and applying them to temperate climates.
Quercus robur, commonly known as common oak, pedunculate oak, European oak or English oak, is a species of flowering plant in the beech and oak family, Fagaceae. It is native to most of Europe west of the Caucasus. The tree is widely cultivated in temperate regions and has escaped into the wild in scattered parts of China and North America.
Hedera, commonly called ivy, is a genus of 12–15 species of evergreen climbing or ground-creeping woody plants in the family Araliaceae, native to western, central and southern Europe, Macaronesia, northwestern Africa and across central-southern Asia east to Japan and Taiwan.
The Major Oak is a large English oak near the village of Edwinstowe in the midst of Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, England. According to local folklore, it was Robin Hood's shelter where he and his merry men slept. It weighs an estimated 23 tons, has a girth of 33 feet, a canopy of 92 feet, and is about 800–1000 years old. In 2014, it was voted 'England's Tree of the Year' by a public poll by the Woodland Trust, receiving 18% of the votes. Its name originates from Major Hayman Rooke's description of it in 1790.
In the United Kingdom, an ancient woodland is a woodland that has existed continuously since 1600 or before in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Planting of woodland was uncommon before those dates, so a wood present in 1600 is likely to have developed naturally.
Trees for Life is a registered charity working to rewild the Scottish Highlands.
The English Lowlands beech forests are a terrestrial ecoregion in the United Kingdom, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the European Environment Agency (EEA). It covers 45,600 km2 (17,600 sq mi) of Southern England, approximately as far as the border with Devon and South Wales in the west, into the Severn valley in the north-west, into the East Midlands in the north, and up to the border of Norfolk in the north-east of its range. The WWF code for this ecoregion is PA0421.
The flora of Scotland is an assemblage of native plant species including over 1,600 vascular plants, more than 1,500 lichens and nearly 1,000 bryophytes. The total number of vascular species is low by world standards but lichens and bryophytes are abundant and the latter form a population of global importance. Various populations of rare fern exist, although the impact of 19th-century collectors threatened the existence of several species. The flora is generally typical of the north-west European part of the Palearctic realm and prominent features of the Scottish flora include boreal Caledonian forest, heather moorland and coastal machair. In addition to the native varieties of vascular plants there are numerous non-native introductions, now believed to make up some 43% of the species in the country.
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. Growth rates for broadleaved (hardwood) trees exceed those of mainland Europe, while conifer (softwood) growth rates are three times those of Sweden and five times those of Finland. In the absence of people, much of Great Britain would be covered with mature oaks, except for Scotland. Although conditions for forestry are good, trees do face damage threats arising from fungi, parasites and pests. The development of afforestation and the production and supply of timber in Wales come under Natural Resources Wales, as set out in the Forestry Act 1967.
Heartwood Forest is a planned forest in Hertfordshire, England. The site covers 347 hectares, the largest continuous new native forest in England.
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.
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:
Gillies Hill is located west of Stirling and the M9, south of Cambusbarron, and north of the Bannock Burn in Central Scotland.
Glen Tanar is a glen in Aberdeenshire, eastern Scotland, through which the Water of Tanar flows. Near the mouth of the glen, at Tower o' Ess, the Water of Tanar flows into the River Dee. This flows through Deeside into the North Sea at Aberdeen. Glen Tanar contains the third largest area of Caledonian Forest in Scotland, and is of national and European importance. It is around 18 miles East from the Queen's private residence at Balmoral Castle.
The Suffragette Oak is a Sessile oak tree in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow, planted in 1918. It was named Scotland's Tree of the Year in 2015.
The Tree of the Year competition is held in the United Kingdom in Autumn each year by the Woodland Trust, a nationwide conservation charity. Nominated trees are shortlisted by a panel of experts before going to public votes to select a tree of the year for each of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom. The panel then selects one of these to become Britain's tree of the year and be nominated for the following year's European Tree of the Year. The competition has been run each year since 2014.
The Carrifran Wildwood is a project by the Borders Forest Trust (BFT) to re-establish native woodland and the associated ecology within Carrifran, a glen NE of Moffat in the Moffat Hills, part of the Southern Uplands of Scotland.
The Last Ent of Affric is an ancient elm in the Scottish Highlands, designated a Tree of National Special Interest (TNSI) by the Woodland Trust and named Scotland's Tree of the Year in 2019. It is probably the last surviving tree of an ancient forest, and by virtue of its isolation has remained safe from Dutch elm disease.
The Ding Dong tree is a Copper beech tree in Prestonpans, Scotland, named Scotland's Tree of the Year in 2016. It achieved 8th place in the European Tree of the Year Award the following year. Although young compared to other trees in these annual competitions, the Ding Dong Tree was recognised as having become 'central to the life and identity of the school' on whose grounds it sits, and a prominent example of 'what individual trees can mean to people'.
