Review of the year

In the year to May 2024 we were able to invest more funds than ever in nature (£71.9 million), plant almost 20 square kilometres of new woodland, and nurse a record 1,040 hectares of woods back to health.

We also made strides in our battle to win iron-clad legal safeguards for the UK’s beautiful ancient woodland. And up and down the country, we are making a difference at landscape scale, with hugely ambitious projects at places like Gleann Shildeag in the Highlands, Snaizeholme in North Yorkshire and Londonderry’s Faughan Valley.

Sincere thanks for all you’ve done to stand alongside us over the last 12 months.

We threw a party at Brynau Farm

Our year began with a bang at Brynau Farm near Neath in Wales. We hosted a gathering of elders from Wales’s Caribbean and South Asian communities, to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush in Britain. There was dancing, drumming and storytelling as families planted a commemorative grove – a joyful seal on our biggest ever new wood in Wales.

150,000 young trees have been planted at Brynau with help from our brilliant volunteer crew, who’ve spent 1,600 happy hours building benches, restoring hedges and corralling the resident herd of Welsh white cattle.

We saved Lake Wood from development

From Mesolithic cave dwellers to modern-day eels, Lake Wood in East Sussex is a hive of history and ecology as well as a vital green lung for the town of Uckfield. It’s little wonder there was an outcry when developers proposed building a huge 442-house estate right next-door.

The development would have affected sensitive bird species including kingfisher, woodcock and the incredibly rare honey buzzard, which visits Lake Wood in summer. Thankfully, after a three-year battle, a petition signed by 5,000 locals and evidence given by volunteer warden, Martyn Stenning, the development was abandoned and this beautiful woodland can continue to thrive.

We struck gold for wild daffodils

In Wales, no flower is more iconic than Narcissus pseudonarcissus – the native wild daffodil. But this bloom is disappearing, nibbled by grazing livestock and hybridised by showier, cultivated daffodils. So, there was rejoicing in March when we saved one of its last remaining strongholds beside our ancient woods at Parc Mawr, high above the Conwy Valley. In fact, so many of these delicate golden flowers spill from the bouldery dell that locals refer to the spot as Daffodil Mountain.

We acquired this rare refuge thanks to a supporter’s generous donation and will now fix the fences and clear encroaching bracken to ensure it shines for generations to come.

We opened Gillian's Wood to visitors

With views to the Black Mountains and across the River Wye to the Malverns, Gillian’s Wood has some of the best views in Herefordshire. Now, it’s more than doubled in size after we acquired £1.2 million Woodbury Hill Wood. This wouldn't have been possible without a gift from the family of the late Gillian Bulmer, a life member.

Gillian’s Wood adjoins medieval Moccas Park – one of Britain’s best strongholds for centuries-old oak trees and the special bats and beetles that rely on them. Together, the wildlife refuges were declared a National Nature Reserve in April.

We launched the Agroforestry Show

Over two sunny days in September 2023 we co-hosted the UK’s first Agroforestry Show, at Bishopstone in Wiltshire. More than 1,300 farmers and foresters joined us to learn more about integrating trees into farmland, which delivers benefits not just for wildlife but for soil health, pollinators, livestock and farm yields. The show was a huge success and will return in 2025 in Hertfordshire, and our hard work advocating for agroforestry has paid off. Defra has commissioned us to lead a two-year study on how agroforestry can be included in its Environmental Land Management grant regime for farmers.

We campaigned for tree equity in the UK

In 2023 we launched our pioneering tool, Tree Equity Score UK, developed in partnership with American Forests and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. We analysed canopy cover in 34,000 urban districts and discovered the least affluent areas have fewer than half the trees they should, and they suffer 30% more air pollution too.

Tree Equity Score UK can be used by decision-makers to help target tree planting in their patch, and we’re already using it to benefit under-served communities through our long-running tree packs programme. In 2023–24 we mailed more than a million free saplings to 7,000 schools and neighbourhood groups nationwide, and almost 20% went to places where tree equity scores are low. Next, we’re mobilising a 50-strong squad of tree pack volunteers to spread the word in districts where adding nature will deliver maximum benefit.

We transformed the Faughan Valley for people and wildlife

Our transformation of the Faughan Valley has been 20 years in the making. At the latest count we’d connected 250 acres of fragmented ancient woodland through tree planting, which includes 150,000 saplings we dug in last winter to create Brackfield Farm Wood. This is the biggest link yet in a long chain of riverside habitat that supports pine martens, otters and kingfishers.

Our work in the Faughan Valley culminated last August with the opening of a new network of walking trails, studded with willow sculptures and complete with an underpass to help badgers and other wildlife negotiate the busy A6 highway.

We went the extra mile for ancient and veteran trees

Or at least, one of us did! In spring 2023 Martin Hugi, long-distance trekker and dedicated member of our conservation team, set forth on a remarkable challenge – to hike 1,000 miles in search of ancient trees. His pilgrimage aimed to draw attention to our Living Legends campaign, which is battling to win watertight legal protection for special trees across the UK.

"These trees are nature’s cathedrals," he explains, "bastions of biodiversity, sentinels of history, and loved by people. Yet they stand virtually defenceless against multiple threats."

Martin took a four-month sabbatical to attempt the journey and made it from Land’s End to Shrewsbury, where we are currently fighting to save the much-loved Darwin Oak. This 550-year-old goliath is one of nine veterans under threat from a roadbuilding scheme.

We celebrated a Northern Forest milestone

The Northern Forest project celebrated its fifth birthday in 2023 with a major milestone. Six million saplings have been dug in across the region, including 388,000 planted last winter at Snaizeholme – part of our scheme to revitalise this nature-depleted valley in the Yorkshire Dales.

Working alongside the Community Forest Trust, Mersey Forest, White Rose Forest, Humber Forest and Manchester’s City of Trees, the Northern Forest aims to plant 50 million life-giving trees across the north of England.

We gave the UK's threatened rainforests a helping hand

Working with partners, we netted over £3.5 million to preserve Britain’s temperate rainforests last year. These moist, moss-strewn sanctuaries harbour some of the world’s rarest ferns and fungi, but mere remnants survive along the Atlantic coast. In England we scooped nearly £3 million from Defra to survey rainforest species across Devon, Cornwall and Cumbria and clear non-native shrubs. Meanwhile, the Trust-backed Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest is upskilling locals to restore degraded habitat thanks to £680,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. One hotspot is our Gleann Shìldeag estate, where work began in winter 2023 to plant half a million saplings by 2028.

Thank you!

We're so grateful to the organisations that supported our work to the tune of £20,000 or more in 2023–24. To one and all, we send our sincere thanks.

Number crunch

Our income in 2023–24 reached a record £84.2 million – an invaluable investment for woods, trees and wildlife! Here's how we raised it – and invested it for the future.