The Lockdown Woods
Join our Lockdown Wood Facebook Group
Newbury Friends of the Earth has teamed up with West Berkshire Council, Newbury Town Council, Growing Newbury Green and Hungerford Town and Manor to create three woods in the district as living memorials to the traumas of the coronavirus pandemic this year.
Become a Tree Guardian
We need members of the public to look for tree seedlings in our gardens and allotments, put them in pots and look after them until they’re big enough to plant in our woods. We hope this will be a fun and exciting way for our community to reconnect with nature around them, while coming to terms with such a turbulent period in our lives.
PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS ON LARGE GATHERINGS WE ARE POSTPONING THE PLANTING OF ALL HOMEGROWN SAPLINGS UNTIL WINTER 2021. PLEASE HOLD ON TO YOUR SAPLINGS UNTIL THEN IF YOU CAN. APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED.
One of our youngest tree guardians, Freddie Marsh, eight years old
Project Updates
About the Project
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us all difficult times with many painful losses. Newbury Friends of the Earth is running The Lockdown Woods project which offers an opportunity to dedicate trees we’ve grown ourselves in our own back gardens in new memorial woodlands in West Berkshire; to share our feelings of mutual grief and uncertainty by making something beautiful for the future.
We are very grateful to Newbury Town Council, Greenham Parish council and other groups for generous financial support which is enabling this project to go ahead as planned this year.
Susan Millington, the main organiser of the project
Our sites
One acre size plot at the western side of the Park. We aim to plantaround three hundred young trees here.
Here, we will be planting twelve fruit trees and a further seventy native woodland trees as part of an extension of the coomunity orchard started by Growing Newbury Green
Barn Crescent
Barn Crescent
Goldwell Park
Westbrook Down
Our largest site, at two acres, is next to Hungerford Marsh and is led by the Town and Manor of Hungerford with Hungerford Environmental Action Team and St Lawrence’s Church
Get involved
Come Plant with us
Want to get your hands dirty while helping to regreen our community? Join us in December to plant our lockdown woods with woodland trust saplings that have been donated to us. We hope this will be a fun day out for all ages.
To make this a safe event with COVID-19, we are staggering arrivals throughout the day, so if you would like to attend please head over to our events page to book in a slot
Dedicate a Tree
This project is about coming to terms with the enormous loss we have suffered during the pandemic. Maybe you have lost someone you cared for greatly either directly or indirectly due to COVID-19? Perhaps you know individuals or businesses that have worked exceptionally hard to keep our country running throughout this period?
We will be holding a dedication ceremony in 2021 for each site where we invite you to dedicate a tree (either your own homegrown sapling or one of ours) to this person or business. More information will be available closer to the time about these events
An example of what your dedicated tree might look like. Please note nothing is to be left on the saplings after the dedication event.