Big business has a critical role to play in saving our woodlands

Up through the dappled oak grove, across a tinkling stream and out into open fields. It’s a lunchtime walk I do a lot, living here in West Yorkshire’s lush Upper Calder Valley. Recently, I’d been skir

When the new year is welcomed in, we hope for good fortune in the months that lie ahead. But 25 years ago, right across the British countryside, good fortune was nowhere to be seen. Instead, 2001 was

The founder of White House Farm Garden and Arboretum in Kent on his enduring love of woody plants and hopes for the future I grew up amid rolling farmland, surrounded by birds, flowers and trees, and

In 1961, a four-hectare field on the southern edge of an ancient woodland called Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire produced its last crop of barley. Having originally been cleared of trees during the Roman

There was a time when almost every arable field in England was bounded by a hedgerow. It has been estimated that between 1750 and 1850, around 2,000 miles of hedgerow were being planted every year, li

When Jon and Ruth arrived at Dittiscombe Farm in South Devon in 1998, their dream of a thriving, natural environment was quickly dashed. “I longed to hear birdsong and see a landscape buzzing with lif