This year marks 10 years of Hazel Hill Wood being held in Trust! As Hazel Hill Trust turns 10, we’re weaving together a programme of events to celebrate, reflect and look ahead.
Wood Chop Challenge weekend
28th – 30th March
This is only our second year of the Wood Chop Challenge, an event that supports itself through the funds raised. It’s a great opportunity to work together in the wood. Chopping and trundling wood, putting our wheelbarrows through their paces, making friends, sharing food (and, of course, cake) and drinking a few hundred gallons of tea and coffee!
Creative Sticks Parent & Toddler Forest School
10.15 am – midday, all Fridays in May, June and July
We’re so pleased to have a regular Forest School back in the wood this year! After a successful pilot in May, Polly Whyte will be running forest fun and muddy mornings with her Creative Sticks Parent and Toddler Forest school through the Summer, playing in nature and making new friends. Activities will focus on the children’s interests, including bug hunts, a mud kitchen, natural crafts, and much more, with mini-activities for grown-ups to re-connect them with nature, too.
BioBlitz 2025
July 4th – 6th
We’ve now run the BioBlitz for seven of our ten years as a charity. We’ve made some exciting discoveries over those years, including Great Crested Newts and, recently, a Dormouse nest! We’ll be sharing those stories with you as we celebrate our first decade in Trust.
Come and join the race to find as much wildlife as we can in 24 hours! Participate in wildlife survey activities from midday to 11pm on Saturday and from 5am (for the dawn chorus!) to 12pm on Sunday. You’re welcome to drop in for as long as you like, or you can book an overnight ticket to stay for the whole event.
Surveys include pond-dipping (always a joy for kids and adults alike), bug hunting, mammal monitoring, wildflower ID, and moth trapping (all with safe catch-and-release and maximum welfare in mind).
Hazel Hill Wood Build Weeks
Save the dates between 4th and 20th of August while we firm up the details. Sign up here to hear all the news!
What’s a Build Week? This is a chance for one of our Trustees, Ciaran Malik, and his equally talented friends to come up with exciting projects that benefit the wood, whether that’s re-imagining gathering spaces or teaching how to use natural materials.
Hazel Hill Wood has a rich history of people getting together to build what we need! It adds to the charm of some of our earlier buildings, and this is an opportunity to revisit that spirit.
How can we bring more regenerative practice to the wood? What will that look like ten years from now? What can we grow? What can we build together? Let’s find out.
Join the list here, and we’ll send you updates as the plan comes together.
Autumn Conservation weekend
October 10th – 12th
Our conservation weekends have been a key part of our year since before the trust started! This is where we learned, in 2024, the techniques we needed to build the continuous woven hazel fence for the roundhouse following a workshop day with the amazingly talented Alistair Hayhurst.
(Did you know Ali is officially an endangered species as a Hurdle & Yurt Maker? So check him out and learn about this ancient craft we want to keep alive and thriving in the UK).
A full programme of events based around conservation tasks and woodland crafts will emerge soon.
Booking essential – link coming soon! Contact us in the meantime.
Imagine how much these weekends have supported the Hazel Hill Wood ecosystem over the last ten years. We’ll be sharing stories from ten (plus!) years of Conservation weekends soon, and would love for you to share your stories too.
Winter Gathering 2025
4th December
This is a wind-down event and a chance for us to catch up and share our gratitude with volunteers and all the other wonderful humans who gather in the wood with us. Warm meals, friendship and fun is as much as we have planned so far – we’ll shape the event closer to the time. All welcome.
Thank you for joining our journey
We hope you enjoy spending time with us in 2025! As we look back, we also look forward. To the next 10, 20, 30 years and beyond – thinking in Tree Time to ensure we protect this precious space and make it a healing space for all creatures to gather for many years to come.
See you in the wood!
Main image courtesy of Emma Griffin Photography