Enchanting forest

In the smallest room of my house, there’s a poster identifying native British trees. I can stare at it for hours on end, lost in dreams about planting.

The burden of my dreams has fallen on my daughter, aged four, who cheerfully plants the pips from her apples in pots. This year we’ve grown 14 trees, some already a foot high. We’ve also started a kind of “tree ambulance service” - whenever we find seedlings springing up on roadsides we save them from the tree-hating council.

The Flintoff household, however, has just a handkerchief-sized garden. So where are we to put our tiny apple trees, and rescued oaks and ash?

The Sunday Times, in partnership with The Woodland Trust, has provided the solution: an opportunity to take part in creating the largest new continuous native forest in England. The trust has identified 850 acres at Sandridge, near St Albans in Hertfordshire, which already contains three small remnants of ancient woodland totalling 44 acres.

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