Tree of the Year 2025

A tree may be a village’s oldest inhabitant, a much-loved local landmark, a place to meet, play or exercise, or a gardener’s pride and joy. Whatever their history, Tree of the Year aims to highlight and appreciate how vital trees are for our landscapes and our lives. 

This year's national contest celebrates the value of trees in our cultural history. We’re shining a light on magnificent trees across the UK that are local landmarks, sources of passion, inspiration and creativity. Each one has a fascinating story to tell, as well as supporting important wildlife, cleaning our air, boosting wellbeing and much more. 

Our expert panel has shortlisted 10 inspirational trees for Tree of the Year 2025. Now is your chance to vote for your favourite and help us crown a champion. The winner will go on to represent the UK in the next European Tree of the Year competition! 

Voting is open until 11.59pm on 19 September and we'll announce this year's winner on 26 September. 

Our thanks to players of People’s Postcode Lottery for sponsoring this year’s competition. 

High on an exposed Cumbrian hillside stands a grove of yew trees that may be the most famous yews in England. Notable features in the landscape, their majesty was described by William Wordsworth in his 1803 poem ‘Yew Trees’: 

‘…those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,  

Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;  

Huge trunks! – and each particular trunk a growth  

Of intertwisted fibres serpentine  

Up-coiling and inveterately convolved…’  

After being immortalised by Wordsworth, the trees featured in the works of others including Francis Frith photographs, John Lowe’s 1896 book The Yew-Trees of Great Britain and Ireland and a 1922 watercolour by Alfred Heaton Cooper. 

Wordsworth referred to four yews, but only three still stand after one was lost in the Great Storm of 1884, though its remains still rest alongside its three companions. They appear to be separate trees, but DNA research has proven that they actually all grew from the same original tree. 

Vote for the Borrowdale Yews

It’s easy to see how this tree earned its name, with long sprawling branches extending at every angle from the wide, hollowing trunk. Estimated to be over 1,000 years old, the branches of this mammoth tree were regularly cut back to encourage regrowth, known as pollarding, until the 19th century which created the fascinating shape it has today.  

Inspired by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s environmental concerns, the band’s 2011 album, King of Limbs, was named after this ancient oak. The tree also influenced the album cover and other works by artist Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since 1994, after they spotted the tree in a Savernake Forest guide book.  

Vote for the King of Limbs

Hundreds of people walk past this unassuming tree every day as they enter the prestigious Edinburgh Napier University, but it has a secret history. The site was formerly a military psychiatric hospital, known as Craiglockhart War Hospital, and in 1917, young poet Wilfred Owen was sent here having suffered shell-shock on the Western Front. He would become the most famous, most widely read poet of the First World War. He famously met Siegfried Sassoon at the hospital, who became his literary mentor and encouraged him to write. The pair may have sat beneath this sycamore in the hospital grounds during their rehabilitation. 

When a large branch of the tree was removed for safety reasons in 2014, local instrument maker Steve Burnett crafted a violin from the wood to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the war's outbreak and honour Owen’s memory. The unique violin has one of Owen’s poems inscribed inside it and has been played at many concerts and events, including by violinist and actor Thoren Ferguson at the official opening of Dreghorn Woods, the Trust’s First World War Centenary Wood near Edinburgh. 

Vote for the Wilfred Owen sycamore

This special lime tree actually began as two trees which gradually met to become a single trunk and are now inseparable. Joined together in this way, they have become a symbol of harmony and hope, and newly married couples sit beneath it so that they may be blessed with health and happiness.  

The tree became famous when Tony Blair, David Trimble and John Hume met here to broker peace in 1998. It represents the two sides coming together in unity at the signing of the Good Friday Agreement which ended the Troubles of Northern Ireland. With the three men pictured beneath the canopy in the hotel’s garden, the tree has since become an icon for peace and reconciliation.  

Vote for the Tree of Peace and Unity

Named for the shape of its rounded canopy atop a tall, slender trunk, this beech tree standing alone on a grassy plain has been popular with photographers for years. It also played a starring role in Sam Mendes’ First World War film, 1917, which follows two young soldiers on a daring mission to deliver a message to the frontline. The Lollipop Tree marks the end of the journey, its whole form in focus for a full minute as the survivor, Schofield, slowly approaches it while a moving soundtrack plays. He reaches out to touch its bark, sits against it and looks at photos of his family before taking a deep breath and closing his eyes to rest in the poignant final scene before the credits roll. 

This isn't the only tree in 1917. The film opens with soldiers sleeping under a tree and Schofield later advises his companion to “Keep your eyes on the trees”. After finding a grove of destroyed fruit trees, the pair discuss how they will regrow from their seeds. And when the end seems nigh, Schofield is revived by the falling petals of cherry blossom. Flourishing trees are a symbol of life, peace, rest and hope throughout.  

Vote for the Lollipop Tree

This tree is a stunner in its own right, one of several enormous cedars of Lebanon in the grounds of Chiswick House that date from the 1720s. Queen Victoria, the Tsar of Russia and the Shah of Persia have been among its many admirers, but perhaps most famously, it features in a Beatles music video.  

The Fab Four recorded two groundbreaking films here in 1966 for Paperback Writer and its B-side, Rain. Shot in colour and on location, these were the predecessors to popular music videos and would change the course of music history. The cedar’s vast boughs swoop down to brush the ground, creating an interesting spot for the band to sit and play their guitars for Rain. This shot was also used as the cover for their Nowhere Man EP.  

Vote for The Beatles' cedar tree

This special tree stands among many others in the grounds of Knole Park but can be recognised by its size and shape. Tall and quite slender for an oak tree, it towers over its neighbours at 135 feet high and is recorded as the tallest sessile oak in Britain. Given its appearance and location, it is thought to be the oak that features in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The novel, considered a literary masterpiece, was inspired by Knole Park and Woolf’s relationship with Vita Sackville-West who lived there.  

In the early pages, Orlando walks ‘very quickly uphill through ferns and hawthorn bushes, startling deer and wild birds, to a place crowned by a single oak tree…so high indeed that nineteen English counties could be seen beneath; and on clear days thirty or perhaps forty’! This tree inspires the poem Orlando writes, titled The Oak Tree, which appears repeatedly throughout the book. Nature is a constant source of comfort and inspiration to Orlando, who eventually returns to the real tree to bury the poem as a tribute.

Vote for the Knole Park oak

This magnificent oak would already have been an impressive tree in the grounds of Bradgate House when Lady Jane Grey, the infamous ‘Nine Days Queen’, was born there in 1537. Less than 50 metres away from the grand Tudor mansion, she could likely see the tree through the windows and may have played beneath its boughs during her childhood.  

Bradgate Park is a hotspot for ancient trees that serve as a living testament to the park’s rich history. This oak would already have been considered a veteran by the time of Lady Jane’s birth and is now even more striking, with an enormous knobbly trunk split into two and branches so gnarled and heavy they need supports. 

Lady Jane Grey holds the unfortunate record of the shortest reigning monarch in British history, taking the throne for nine days in July 1553 before being overthrown by Mary I and beheaded, aged 17. Legend has it that in an act of mourning, Bradgate Park’s oaks had their upper branches removed. This tree was definitely cut back in the past - could it be proof that the legend is true? 

Vote for Bradgate Park's oldest oak

Perched alone on the shore of a vast, glassy lake against a backdrop of Eryri's majestic mountains, this young birch is a cherished local landmark and a photographer’s dream. Its bent, stretching shape has contorted in response to harsh weather conditions, making it a symbol of resilience and a fascinating focus for the lens through all seasons. The scene is everchanging as the lake levels rise and recede, with the tree alternately exposing its tenacious roots at the water’s edge or clinging to its own tiny island as the surroundings are submerged.  

In the right light, the reflections mirrored on the lake’s surface are picture-perfect – so much so that the tree appeared in a 2021 Chromebook advert. And access to the tree was blocked in September 2024 when Netflix closed an area of the lake to film major battle scenes for season four of The Witcher, starring Liam Hemsworth. Set for release later in 2025, we don’t know yet if the Lonely Tree will make the cut, but directors surely would have taken advantage of such a beautiful vista! 

Vote for the Lonely Tree

Chosen from our public nominations, this lofty ash stands alongside the tenements on one of Glasgow’s busiest streets. Also known locally as The Lone Tree of Finnieston or The Only Tree on Argyle Street, this is not a grand tree in a great estate. It is a tenement tree. A people’s tree. A tree that lives in the hearts of Glaswegians and is part of the city’s emotional architecture, says David Treanor who nominated it. Rooted in the social history of Glasgow, it has survived the Clydeside Blitz, the rise and fall of industry, and is now defying the odds to resist ash dieback too. 

In recognition of its cultural and ecological value to the city, the tree was the first in Glasgow to be protected by a tree preservation order. In his 1935 book, From Glasgow’s Treasure Chest, James Cowan records it as “a very tall ash tree, its highest branches reaching far above the top windows of the tenement. It is quite the most graceful ash I have seen.” Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch is among the tree's more modern admirers: “It must have good genes to have made it. It’s hip now because it’s in Finnieston, but I say it was always cool.” 

Vote for the Argyle Street ash