A new community woodland

When we create a new woodland we don't just 'get some land and plant some trees' - a lot of time, effort and planning goes into creating community woodlands, and we're just seeing the latest one come to fruition!

Back in November we met with Houghton Conquest Parish Council to show them draft designs for our newest site, and get their initial comments. In January (which, due to the pandemic, feels like a million years ago now!) we ran a drop-in session in the village to show residents the designs and ask for their feedback. It was a great opportunity to talk to people and explain what we do as well as getting their thoughts on the project. Everyone was excited about the prospect of a new, large woodland down the road.

We have an existing site in Houghton Conquest (Conquest Wood) which is a lovely, smaller woodland - used by lots of local people (no doubt, moreso during lockdown). This new site will offer something different - complementing what the community already have - the more woodlands, the better! 

In July we completed the final part of the process - an online survey for residents. It's important to us to get as many opinions as possible from potential users of the site - obviously not everyone came to the drop-in, so we widened the net with the survey. We're always aiming to create better connectivity with existing Rights of Way and the best people to ask are often the people who already use the site - local knowledge is vital to this kind of process. 

146 people responded - just over half said they'd like to use the new site every week and over 20% said they'd use it daily! We got a lot of suggestions for the name of the new site as well so watch this space - we'll be planting in the new year (Covid 19 regulations permitting) so we'll have more news soon, hopefully!

Click here to read the consultation results

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