Hazel Hill is a lovingly managed conservation woodland and education centre, 7 miles from Salisbury.
The wood is owned and operated by Hazel Hill Trust, a registered charity formed in 2015.
If you’d like to hold your own event or activity here, we offer beautiful indoor and outdoor spaces to hire. By choosing us you’ll be contributing to valuable charity work, allowing more people the opportunity to connect with the natural world.
Charitable aims
Our vision is for Hazel Hill to be a rich and thriving woodland where people can nourish their connection with the land, themselves and each other, helping them to develop personal resilience, well-being and a greater understanding of living sustainably.
Our main activities to fulfil these aims are a range of programmes helping people to engage more deeply with nature.
Education
The wood currently hosts around 60 events per year, involving around 1000 people in total. These events range from residential weekends to 2-hour groups for local people. Many events are delivered or supported by the Hazel Hill staff team. Some are delivered by partner organisations whose events are coordinated as part of the overall programme.
There is great variety in the client groups, themes and activities offered at Hazel Hill. The underlying aim is to enable people to improve their wellbeing and resilience by deeper contact with nature. Whilst open events are listed on the Hazel Hill website, many groups at the wood are not listed as they are private bookings, for example school groups and other organisations. Here are a few examples of events at the wood:
- A wellbeing day for children from a local primary school.
- A 28-hour woodland resilience immersion for stressed NHS doctors.
- A weekend on how to learn resilience skills from nature.
- A conservation day for local people experiencing depression or bereavement.
Conservation and Forestry
Hazel Hill is a highly varied 70-acre wood, with diverse habitats and abundant wildlife, including some rare butterflies. Regular conservation days and weekends are essential in sustaining all this. Our ever growing volunteer base now stands at well over one hundred. Between 10 and 20 volunteers join us at least once a month on our Volunteer Conservation Days. The wood is also managed for sustainable, productive forestry, and has some good stands of oak, beech and pine.
Facilities
The wood has a range of timber buildings, largely using timber from the wood. There are indoor and outdoor group spaces, and residential and cooking facilities for groups up to 30 people. These facilities are almost entirely off-grid, with two different electrical systems, four types of compost toilets, a reed bed for greywater, and all heating by firewood from the wood.
Other Projects
The vision for the Trust gives it a remit which extends beyond running programmes at Hazel Hill Wood. The Trust has already shared expertise with a number of other projects, and intends to expand its range of online resources.
Read our annual report
Hazel Hill Trust – Annual Report 2019