We're at the Slindon estate in West Sussex. About 100 years ago most of this area was all trees
and for the last eight years the National Trust has been working hard to restore it.
So today we're going on a walk with a very special guest who understands more than
almost anybody about the very special connections between people, nature and woodlands.
Hello John how are you?
All right thank you.
I'm in second heaven of course. Woodland is my thing. Look at this beautiful oak tree
and wonderful holly, but I've been looking around and...
What have you found?
I found all sorts of things. You see here, this is where a deer has couched, which means rested.
Its rear end was here, its head was here, and this is where the feet were tucked up
and from the shape I can say that this is a doe.
Now this is one of my favourite trees, the lime tree. This is a real friend. I love to hug trees. To me these are living things
and they're sentient, they move their leaves to the sun, they just move very, very slowly.
This was so important to our ancestors, these were the lettuce of the forest. Even now which is late in the year,
it's still edible. But this tree had so many uses, the bark makes wonderful rope.
It's quite possible that Stonehenge was erected with ropes made of lime trees.
Our ancestors were good observers and this was everything to them, this was their pharmacy their hardware store
their food store, there's nothing here they wouldn't have known about I'm sure of that .
So this is a tree planting area that I've brought you to Ray which is an area which
we're re-establishing with trees and we've got three trees here to pop in today.
We've got a field maple, an oak and a hazel and they'll all require slightly different conditions to to thrive.
but it's really important that we do put the right trees where they're going to stand
the best chance of surviving and also the trees that we think will do the best jobs
that we want them to do, in this case it's really providing fantastic habitats for nature.
so what we'll need to do, just put the tree down there for a second, we'll have to create a nice sort of space.
You need to be able to have some space for its roots to grow a little bit.
Some people just cut a T-shape.
They would do - you can get different sort of trees
that we plant and this one's in a little pot so it's got a little soil plug that you need to have space
for those roots to grow out of. A lot of the trees that we plant, they're called bare root trees
so they come just with the roots and as you say, you just need a slot for that.
So I'm thinking maybe we'll use these brambles to provide it with some extra protection.
Yeah absolutely. obviously we have to protect our trees from things that might want to eat them
and so we do use tree guards where we have to. We're doing lots of work and using different materials,
anything from cardboard to wool, but then the ideal situation would be to actually not use tree guards at all
and try to find ways where we can establish trees without the need to protect them.
What about the hazel? we're near some hazel so that's a good indication we're in the right sort of place.
Yeah, exactly. Over the First World War and the Second World War, tree cover across the uk
dropped to historically low levels and the woodlands that would have existed here for millennia
disappeared during that time so the guys at Slindon here have been restoring those
to a much more sort of normal level of woodland cover that we'd expect to see.
The work that they're doing here really is ahead of its time using natural regeneration,
using planting, creating wood pasture, and really serves an example for all of us to learn from
in thinking about how we might establish our woodlands going forward.
So this is our last tree Ray, it's an oak tree which is a really important tree for obviously for the National Trust.
as it sits on our emblem. A nice open space with lots of sunshine, so It'll certainly like it.
If everybody in the country was to plant one tree, think how many trees we would put back.
It wouldn't take long would it?
It certainly wouldn't.
So there's lots of things we can all do to help nature.
You could plant a tree in your garden, you could put flowers on your windowsill for insects to use for nectar,
or if you haven't got space in your own garden, you can donate to us by giving to our Plant A Tree fund and we can do something on your behalf.
but of course we don't always need to do this and sometimes nature can do it for us,
so why don't we go and have a look at one of those areas just now.
That sounds perfect.
So Ray, I've brought you to an area of natural regeneration
rather than planting, to just show the differences between what we've done here and what we do in other places.
This is what really excites me, is that as soon as you see natural regeneration
you see something completely different. Obviously this wood's been protected from
browsing attention of deer so it's got away really fast. I mean look at the amount of life that's here.
So this was an arable field just about eight years ago which we then enclosed
and let nature do its work.
Can you do this everywhere?
Not everywhere. We can use it in a lot of places and we're lucky here.
If we look around us, we can see that there's woodland surrounding us
which we can use as a natural seed source for these woodlands to expand
but in other places where there's really no history of tree cover or no adjacent seed sources for very big distances
we might need to do some some work to help that along.
But it's never a binary choice, we don't have to just either plant or allow for natural regeneration we can do a blend of those things.
That's the secret, it's learning to work in harmony with nature.
Indeed, yeah.
So Ray, thank you so much for coming today. It's been a fantastic time spent with you.
I felt it's really instructional and informative and I've loved every minute so thank you.
It's been a privilege, I mean to be out in the woodland in Britain well that's fantastic,
but also to be in your company and to see the forest through your eyes as a professional forester,
that's been incredibly informative.
I'd really like to take this opportunity to thank our volunteers, our members, our visitors and all those that support us.
It's only with your help and support that places like Northwood that we're planting and regenerating here
could survive and we can look after them for the long term so thank you for all of that.