Posted on 9th Dec
Sherwood Forest Trust — a charity entirely focused on Sherwood Forest — is celebrating its 25th birthday.
The Edwinstowe-based charity plans a year-long celebration of what it has achieved and what it intends to do for the next quarter of a century.
Chief executive Patrick Candler said: “Since 1995, when the then Secretary of State for the Environment, the Rt Hon John Gummer, let loose an arrow to open the trust, we’ve achieved major successes — bringing millions of pounds into the Sherwood area, for the benefit of wildlife and people.”
Key past projects carried out by the trust include:
The first Lottery-funded Landscape Partnership Scheme (LPS), from 2002-2007, worth £5.5m
A TV campaign to Discover King John’s Palace (2014) at King’s Clipstone.
Celebrating the 800th anniversaries of the sealing of the Magna Carta in 2015, and the Forest Charter in 2017
Planting thousands of trees all over Sherwood, working with schools and local communities
Restoration of hedgerows and lowland heathlands such as Sherwood Heath, which won a national Green Flag award, and Oak Tree Heath
Organising The Major Oak Woodland Festival – the biggest of its kind in the county
Recent creation of the Mayflower 400 Oaks Pilgrim Plantation in Bassetlaw
Launching the Spirit of Sherwood local heritage project, to engage local people with the WW2 history of Sherwood Forest
Terry Yates, chairman of the trust, addeds: “It’s been a real privilege to be chairman of the trust for the past 10 years.
“Although we’re a small charity, we have built up an enviable reputation for the range of quality of the work that we do for Nature and the support we’ve given to private sector companies and local authorities, but mainly local community organisations.
“The gist of what we do is in our name – people Trust us!
“The birthday celebration isn’t all about our past. We have our sights on the future. In 2021, we’re launching a new campaign to do even more sustainable conservation work, community engagement, woodland and heathland restoration.
“In a time of climate extremes and huge pressures on our environment and livelihoods, we need to be working even harder to redress the imbalance of nature.”
With Covid-19 affecting all organisations, how does a small but passionate local charity weather the storm?
Patrick outlined the challenges, saying: “In a ‘normal’ year, autumn would be our most productive time, beginning with the Major Oak Woodland Festival and the start of the tree planting season.
“In every past year we’ve been able to fund a tree planting or heathland restoration programme with the help of sponsorship and direct physical help from local businesses. This year, such help has not been possible for understandable reasons.
“But we are keeping things ticking over and in the past month we’ve collected more than 5,000 acorns in this ‘mast’ year for our Sherwood Seed Bank. These are all now in propagation trays ready to grow and be planted out a year from now — when hopefully Covid will be history.
“We’re also working with a local school to plant fruit trees in the school garden while, on our culture and history side, our latest heritage project, Spirit of Wartime Sherwood, allowed two classes from a Mansfield school to experience a WW2 Evacuees Day — reliving how wartime children from cities were relocated.”
For further information about the work of the Trust go to www.sherwoodforest.org.uk and facebook.com/SherwoodForestTrust
