Sherwood Forest comes to Dorset

Rachel pictured with National Trust representatives and Jason Bowerman, King Charles representative who heads up work at Poundbury

Some years ago, Trees for Dorset member John Palmer from Wimborne visited Sherwood Forest to gather acorns from the ancient tree known as the Major Oak. (The tree is pictured below in a photo from circa 1900.)

This trip was prompted by a radio programme John had heard speculating that most of Britain's oaks are in fact of foreign providence and it is only ancient veteran trees that can be described as truly native. At nearly 1000 years old the Major Oak surely carries some ancient genes.

John and his wife Rosie germinated a large number of the acorns they had collected and with the help of other TfD members planted them out in a field they owned near Wimborne. These trees grew well and in 2020 they started producing their own crops of acorns. Further harvesting and germination yielded another 96 oak saplings and these were the trees planted last autumn to commemorate the life of our late Queen Elizabeth II.

A suitable site at Shapwick, part of the National Trust Kingston Lacey estate was chosen and in November 2023 a goodly number of TfD volunteers and members of public from the village planted out the young oaks.

Although the weather was kind to us on the day, it had rained hard in the run up to the event and in an attempt to help make things easier on the day the National Trust had pre-dug the holes. This was a mixed blessing as many of the holes had filled with water but luckily one of the children of a member ran around with a bucket emptying the water from the holes to assist the planters.

Nonetheless planting was finished in record time including fitting temporary cardboard deer guards.

Simon Goldsack signs the book of commemoration

At this point we retired to the gazebo which had been set up to enjoy some very welcome and delicious hot, home made soup and bread rolls provided by Tony Warne.

We all signed a book of commemoration and this along with some photos of the event have been sent off to King Charles.

It was most appropriate Major Oak offspring were used in this planting to honour of Her Majesty as it used to be called the Queen's Oak.

The planting is on land with public access and the new Queen's Wood will form part of a wider area of tree planting the National Trust are carrying out to help combat climate change.

by former Chairperson Rachel Palmer

In February this year we were back at Shapwick for the planting of a willow carr and popped by to see how the oak trees were doing. I am pleased to say the National Trust estate workers had erected a deer fence right around the oaks to secure their future.