Our ambassadors

Dame Judi Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA

One of Britain’s most respected film, stage and television actresses, Dame Judi has worked for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company and won no fewer than eight prestigious Olivier Awards. Known internationally for roles in films including James Bond, Mrs Brown, Shakespeare in Love and Iris.

Dr J Nicola Nicholls, LVO

Nicola is a volunteer teacher of Maths and Science at City primary schools. A former research scientist and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Nicola left private equity and Charterhouse Capital Partners 16 years ago to work as chair, non-executive director, volunteer, mentor, ambassador, advisor and trustee for quoted and unquoted companies, charities, social businesses, academic institutions and government advisory committees. She has used her business experience to plant millions of trees, help prisoners into the workplace, revitalise deprived areas and commercialise academic inventions. Her most rewarding role was that of Chair of the Woodland Trust.

Audrey Hoare

Audrey Hoare is family representative at Hoare and Co, a private bank in Fleet Street. Audrey was the fundraising director and is now an ambassador at the charity Nordoff Robbins, as well as serving as an ambassador for the Woodland Trust since 2011.

Clive Aslet

Clive Aslet is the publisher of Triglyph Books and a visiting professor of architecture at the University of Cambridge. For many years he worked at the magazine Country Life, where he was editor from 1993 until 2006. He has written widely for newspapers and appeared on other media, often discussing architecture, the countryside and British life. Since publishing The Last Country Houses with Yale University Press in 1982, he has written over 30 books, most recently The Story of the Country House (Yale) and Sir Edwin Lutyens: Britain’s Greatest Architect? (Triglyph).

Married with three children, Clive lives in London and Ramsgate. He has been an ambassador for the Trust since 2010.

Tracy Chevalier

Tracy FRSL is the author of 11 novels, including the international bestseller Girl with a Pearl Earring, and At the Edge of the Orchard, in which trees play an important part. She sat on the Board of the British Library for many years, and is a Trustee of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. Tracy co-edited Why Willows Weep, a collection of short stories produced to support the work of the Woodland Trust.

William Fiennes

William Fiennes is the author of two books, The Snow Geese and The Music Room. William has also written for Granta, the London Review of Books, the Observer, The Daily Telegraph and the Times Literary Supplement. He is the director and co-founder of the charity First Story, which promotes writing in challenging schools in Great Britain.

Judith Batchelar OBE

Judith has worked in the food and drink industry for 40 years in manufacturing, retailing, and from 2004 to 2021 as Director of Sainsbury’s Brand, driving the product quality and innovation agendas along with corporate responsibility, sustainability and public affairs.

Today, Judith is deputy chair of the Environment Agency, chair of both MicroSalt and the Rugby Players Association, a non-executive director of Monaghan Mushrooms and Daemon, a trustee of The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and an ambassador for Farm Africa.

Judith is a biochemist, nutritionist, has an Honorary Doctorate in Agriculture from Harper Adams University, is honorary president of the British Nutrition Foundation and a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), the Royal Society of Arts and Manufactures (RSA) and a liveryman at The Worshipful Company of Butchers.

From 2013 to 2018 she co-chaired the Government's AgriTech Council, and today she co-chairs Defra’s Food Data Transparency Partnership eco group. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 for services to farming and the food industry, and is a commissioner on the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission and The Harper Commission into the Future of UK Food Banks.

Adam Shaw

Adam Shaw is an award-winning journalist, presenting programmes such as BBC’s Panorama and Money Box, and ITV’s The Tonight Programme. In addition to his work on television and radio, Adam has written for several newspapers and co-authored a number of books. He has been an ambassador for the Woodland Trust since 2011 and currently presents our Woodland Walks podcast.

Veronica Pickering

Veronica Moraa Pickering was the first Kenyan to be appointed by His Majesty the King as the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire (March 2023–March 2024), and on 2 March 2024 was the first woman to be appointed by the King as Lord Lieutenant for the county of Nottinghamshire.

A social entrepreneur, Veronica is a former UK Safeguarding Specialist and International Child Protection Consultant for the UN, working with many NGOs across Africa, supporting vulnerable people, their families and communities. Veronica now works as an advisor to a number of public and private sector boards, and works as executive coach and partnership specialist with a number of companies and organisations across the UK. Veronica is also a visiting professor to Lincoln International Business School focusing on resilience and diversity, and sits on the advisory board for Nottingham University Business School.

A strong supporter of the arts and nature conservation charities, she has held a variety of executive and non-executive posts. She is currently a trustee of the RSPB, and a UK ambassador for the Woodland Trust and UK RAF Museums. Veronica is the Patron of Royal British Legion Nottinghamshire, Nottingham City Business Club and Sharewear.

Veronica is the first woman of colour in the UK to be appointed Royal Air Force (RAF) Honorary Air Commodore (HAC) for 504 County of Nottingham Squadron. In 2022, Veronica was awarded the Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear (M.B.S) for services to Kenya by President Uhuru Kenyatta. She is married to the Nottinghamshire born artist Roy Pickering. They have two adult children and live near Nottingham.

Sir David Steel

Sir David joined the Royal Navy in 1979 and, during the course of a career in uniform lasting 36 years, specialised in operational logistics and personnel management. As a barrister, he also held a number of appointments as a legal adviser, as well as being the Royal Navy's senior judge advocate. Sir David retired from the role of Second Sea Lord in the rank of Vice-Admiral in 2015. He was CEO of the Leeds Castle Foundation from 2015 until 2020, and Governor and Commander-in-Chief Gibraltar from 2020 until 2024. He is a trustee of a number of charities.

Elliott Mannis

A former trustee and chair of the Finance Committee and the Board Affairs Committee at the Woodland Trust, Elliott is presently Chairman of London Bridge Capital, a corporate finance advisory firm focused on the energy and infrastructure sector. A chartered accountant by background, Elliott was born and raised in Canada and moved to Europe in 1988. He has worked with several firms in senior roles including Price Waterhouse, Aegis Group, Anglian Water and D1 Oils. He is also involved as a non-executive of several organisations. Amongst other things, Elliott continues to support the Woodland Trust by mentoring young entrepreneurs.

John Lovering

After a 20-year career in corporate life including spells as finance director of FTSE 100-listed Sears plc and chief operating officer of Tarmac plc, John became a leading operator in private equity. He was chairman of Homebase, Somerfield, Fitness First, Debenhams and Host Europe and a number of consumer businesses in the early 2000s. He then set up the Lovering Charitable Foundation, which has been particularly active in providing educational opportunities for individuals in secondary and tertiary education and supporting early years charities in London. He has been a trustee of Save the Children, Retail Trust, and the Retail Credit Union. He has been governor of schools in the public and private sector. He is a farmer in his third career and is a committed tree planter, with around 250,000 in Talla, Scotland and 30,000 in East Sussex.

Sue Roe, OBE

Sue worked for the Woodland Trust for 19 years and was also chairman of the Tree Council. She is an active member of the Royal Horticultural Society’s herbaceous plant committee, a trustee of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and a member of the National Garden Scheme’s Norfolk committee, and continues to be a conservation and horticultural activist.

Kate Adie, OBE

Kate is an award-winning journalist renowned for her breakthrough work as one of the first female correspondents to report from war zones and hot spots such as Iraq, the Balkans and Rwanda. She is the author of five bestselling books and presents a programme on BBC Radio 4. Kate was awarded an OBE in 1993 and a CBE in 2019.

Jonathon Drori CBE

Author of Around the World in 80 Trees and Around the World in 80 Plants, Jon is a trustee of Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Cambridge Science Centre, and honorary professor at Birmingham University's Institute of Forest Research. Previously, he was a trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Eden Project and the Woodland Trust, and worked for the BBC as executive producer of science documentaries and editorial director of BBC Online.

Miranda Kendall

Miranda owns an innovative organic farm in Suffolk, an early adopter of regenerative farming practices and agroforestry, working with the Woodland Trust to provide a case study. Miranda co-founded and chairs Phipps Relations, PR advisers to the food and drink industry. She is vice chair of Ormiston Families, and also of prison charity Fine Cell Work, and is a vice-president of The Country Trust.

Sandi Toksvig

Sandi is a prolific author, broadcaster, entertainer and historian. Her recent work has made her a household name, presenting television shows such as The Great British Bake Off and QI. Sandi has written a number of children’s books as well as many fiction and non-fiction books for adults.

Charity Wakefield

An established film, television and stage actress, Charity Wakefield has starred in a range of critically and commercially acclaimed projects, including Hulu's The Great, the BBC’s Sense and Sensibility and Wolf Hall, Channel 4’s Any Human Heart, The Cherry Orchard (The National) and Nicole Charles’s all-female production of Emilia (The Globe/Vaudeville Theatre). She is a regular judge on Marie Claire's Sustainability Awards, a supporter of the Woodland Trusts Igniting Innovation Competition for young people and writes about sustainable fashion and eco-conscious gardening. She is also developing and producing film work, in connection to Equity's Green Rider.

David Oakes

David is a prolific stage and screen actor, predominantly recognisable for his roles in television period dramas. He is best known for his roles as Prince Ernest in ITV’s Victoria, Godwin in Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla, George Plantagenet in the BBC’s The White Queen and Juan Borgia in Showtime's The Borgias.

David's many stage credits include playing the title role in Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the Rose Theatre in York, Thomas Novachek in Venus in Fur and Christopher Marlowe in Shakespeare in Love, both in the West End.

Alongside his acting work, David produces his own award-winning natural history podcast, 'Trees A Crowd', the third season of which focused purely upon Britain’s 56(ish) native tree species. David also serves as an ambassador to both The Wildlife Trusts and David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, and has written for a number of national newspapers.

JB Gill

JB Gill rose to fame as a member of JLS – one of the UK’s biggest boybands – after which he set up a farm in the Kent countryside where he produces award-winning KellyBronze turkeys and free-range Tamworth pork. JB has used his success within the entertainment industry to educate children about the origins of their food, presenting the BAFTA-nominated television series, Down On the Farm. JB’s enthusiasm for farming life and knowledge of countryside issues has seen him contribute to the BBC’s Countryfile and Springwatch, as well as front programmes such as Springtime On the Farm and Big Week at the Zoo.

Patrick Cregg, MBE

Patrick Cregg worked for the Woodland Trust for over 20 years, during which time he was appointed director of Northern Ireland when the office was established in 2000. In 2015, while in office, Patrick was awarded an MBE for his services for woodland conservation. Outside of his work for the Trust, Patrick was president of the Bangor Horticultural Society and president of Bangor Rotary.

Cressida Cowell

Children’s Laureate 2019–22, Cressida Cowell MBE is the number one bestselling author–​illustrator of the How to Train Your Dragon, The Wizards of Once and Which Way to Anywhere book series, and the author of the Emily Brown picture books, illustrated by Neal Layton. She is best known for her How to Train Your Dragon series which has inspired a generation of fans worldwide and DreamWorks' Academy Award-nominated film and TV series.

Cressida is a passionate believer in the transformative power of books and a vocal advocate for the need to support creative industries in the UK. Cressida is a patron of Read for Good, an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Woodland Trust, and she is on the Council of the Society of Authors. She is an honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, and has an honorary doctorate from the University of Brighton. She has won numerous prizes for her books, including the Blue Peter Book Award, the Ruth Rendell Award for Championing Literacy, Gold Award in the Nestle Children's Book Prize, the Hay Festival Medal for Fiction, and Philosophy Now magazine's Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity.

Ann Medlock

After qualifying as a chartered surveyor in 1988, Ann has worked in commercial property for over 25 years in both the UK and the US, establishing and running an international commercial investment company.

Now living back in Scotland, Ann has established a bespoke tour business to cater for international travellers seeking a unique Scottish experience, particularly focused around Scotch whisky.

Over the past five years, Ann has sought out rare and limited-edition Scotch whisky for her clients as well as buying and selling private collections on behalf of enthusiasts all over the world. More recently, she has established Golden Decanters with Julia Hall Mackenzie-Gillanders, taking rare bottlings to a network of private clients in North America, Asia and across Europe.

Katya Speciale

Katya read chemistry at Oxford University and spent 15 years at Unilever in a number of different roles, from supply chain to marketing. In 2013, she co-founded strategic consultancy Off The Fence Marketing, specialising in strategy, communication and innovation and working with leading brands in food, drink, beauty and retail. Passionate about investing in future generations and sustainability, Katya is a member of Cambridge University’s Chemistry Department philanthropy group and a long-term supporter of woodland conservation.

Danny Clarke

Danny is a garden designer and TV presenter best known for appearing on BBC's Instant Gardener, Channel 5’s Filthy Garden SOS, and as a member of Alan Titchmarsh’s Love Your Garden team. He is well known for transforming gardens into incredible spaces.

Danny founded his own bespoke garden design company in 1997, called The Black Gardener, and co-directs Grow2Know, a charity set up to bring horticulture to a diverse group of young people and disadvantaged communities. Danny believes in building gardens to inspire, educate, empower and heal.

Humphrey Battcock

Humphrey was a managing partner at Advent International, one of the world’s largest and most global private equity firms. He has worked in private equity for 30 years, during which time he has served on the boards of 23 companies in a variety of industries.

He also serves on the Cambridge Campaign Board and is a trustee of the Institute for Research in Schools and lectures at Oxford Business School. Humphrey became an ambassador for the Woodland Trust in 2009.

Will Hobhouse

Will has worked in retail and digital businesses all his working life, developing Tie Rack and Whittard of Chelsea as CEO; latterly Jack Wills, Le Pain Quotidien, Explore Learning, Teemill and King and Mcgaw as Chair.

He has previously worked with the British Museum Company, Cancer Research UK, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Greenhouse Sports to further their aims.

With his wife Kate, he manages their woodland in Hertfordshire with the 'help' of his five children. Will previously served as a trustee for the Woodland Trust and became an ambassador in 2011.

Tristan Gooley

Tristan is best known as an author and natural navigator. After setting up his navigational school in 2008, he has gone on to write for numerous publications including the Sunday Times, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as penning numerous internationally bestselling books including The Natural Navigator, The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs and his most recent Sunday Times Bestseller, How to Read a Tree.

Tristan has given talks across the world and appeared on TV and radio programmes in the UK and internationally, including The Today Programme, Countryfile and BBC Stargazing Live.

He is also vice chairman of the independent travel company, Trailfinders, and is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Royal Geographical Society.

Barbara Young

Barbara, Baroness Young of Old Scone, is a member of the House of Lords with special interests in the environment, agriculture, natural resources and climate change. In her personal time, she is a keen dressage rider.

Barbara was chair of the Woodland Trust from 2016–2024. She has been chair of the Royal Veterinary College since 2019 and is a member of the Commission on Food, Farming and the Countryside. Until 2020, Barbara was chancellor of Cranfield University for 10 years.

Her voluntary positions include honorary president of the South Georgia Heritage Trust and vice president of RSPB, BirdLife International, and Flora and Fauna International.

Baroness Young has formerly held a variety of environmental leadership roles, including chief executive of RSPB, chair of English Nature and chief executive of the Environment Agency. She also held leadership positions in health and social care, including the Care Quality Commission and Diabetes UK. Other posts she has held include vice chairman of the BBC and non-executive director of AWG plc.

Barbara has a number of honorary designations and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017.

Luke Adam Hawker

Luke is an artist who cherishes the simple yet profound beauty of the world around him, capturing these moments through his on-location drawings. With a deep appreciation for trees and the natural world, Luke uses his art to create meaningful connections with the places he visits and the people he meets.

Best known for his Sunday Times Bestselling Book Together, Luke recently introduced his second book, The Last Tree: A Seed of Hope, in 2023. This touching fable delves into the significance of our relationship with the natural world.

Grateful for the support of his community, Luke has been humbled by the growing number of followers on social media, now exceeding 500,000, who share his enthusiasm for art and the wonders of the natural world.