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
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!
Please donate to our fundraising page here!
Creative Sticks Parent & Toddler Forest School
10.15 am – midday, all Fridays in May
Every Friday morning in May, Polly Whyte will be running forest fun and muddy mornings with her Creative Sticks Parent and Toddler Forest school, 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
July 4th – 6th
Come and join the race to find as much wildlife as we can in 24 hours! Join wildlife survey activities from 12-10 pm on Saturday and 4 am (for the dawn chorus!) to 12 pm on Sunday. You’re welcome to drop in for as long as you like or to book an overnight ticket and stay for the whole thing.
Surveys may 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).
Booking essential – link coming soon! Contact us in the meantime.
Hazel Hill Wood Build Weeks
Save the dates between 14th to 27th July 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. 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.
10 Year Celebration Weekend
27th & 28th September
We’ll bring together past, present and hopefully future friends of the woods to help us celebrate this magical place. What would you like to see happen at the celebration weekend? Helps us build it!
Send us an email: “My celebration wish list is...”
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!