Sibsey Wood volunteers

The Woodland Trust Volunteer Awards 
Sibsey Wood volunteers, Willow Award 

>> Jo and Jules, woodland working group members: 
So, just to give a little bit of the history of the Sibsey Wood, it was planted 18 years ago to mark the millennium and, in many ways, it's been left to its own devices in all those years. And so, it’s now time to give it a little bit of TLC. And what we're doing as a volunteer group is we're coming in and doing some coppicing, which is great because it creates an understorey which is brilliant for the wildlife. I'm also doing a little bit of thinning which lets in sunlight to let some of the trees grow and mature and spread out. 

The benefits of volunteering for the Woodland Trust that I've come across, and there's so many, you just always feel better when you've been in a woodland. Yeah, even when it's pouring with rain, you always feel better. The other thing is it's just, it's a different way of being with your friends and colleagues and having fun together and getting to know each other more and it's just this fantastic teamwork goes on and also, underlying all that, you have this wonderful feeling that you're doing something incredibly positive. You do, you feel like you're doing something for the planet don't you? Yeah.  

There's all sorts of ways you get support from the central volunteering team. It's hands-on support, including training, which is absolutely vital of course for your confidence in doing what you're doing and you’re doing it safely. So the support from the Woodland Trust is great and educating you as well about the trees and how to look after them, and you can apply that to your own garden and so it's good for your own personal learning. 

>> James Jesson, site manager – North: 
I nominated the Sibsey volunteer group because they are incredibly keen. They are dedicated to the site. The woodland itself is only 20 years old and it's just at that point where it's not profitable to bring contractors in and this group come in and actually start to turn it around and make it a more inviting site.  

Really, what we're trying to encourage the group to work along with is the health and safety side, to make that woodland an inviting place for people to come in. The coppicing is an incredibly important part because it's not economically viable to have contractors in to do the work so actually what they're doing on a small scale is undertaking the coppice work.