Welcome

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Aims of Blyth Woods:

  • To make wildlife corridors and extend wildlife habitats

  • To leave new wild spaces as a legacy for the future

  • To engage the community so that our wild spaces are secure and safe

  • To provide long term resources for the community

The Blyth Woods group got together in 2012 to plan, plant and maintain community woods in the parish of Wenhaston, Suffolk and the parishes of the Blyth Valley. While looking for land to plant on, we started a programme of activities with village schoolchildren, taking out a succession of year groups, collecting acorns, planting them in the school tree nursery, tending young saplings and eventually planting them out around the village, filling in hedge gaps, and along borders of the commons. The children are growing up beside their trees! Then we found the ideal location – the small field adjacent to Vicarage Grove known as Grove Piece. The land became ours in 2018 and great strides have been made in the creation of a community woodland. So successful indeed that we sought further land and, just over one year later, acquired the ownership of Malster’s Little Field, immediately adjacent to Grove Piece. Since then we have taken on the management of the Ancient Woodland of Vicarage Grove and have a “Licence to Occupy” the small area called The Copse. These areas neatly join to provide an area of mixed community wild space, which we call Grove Woods, where wildlife can thrive and which everyone can visit and enjoy.

In 2024 we took out a 25 year lease on a 1.83 ha (4.562 acres) field near the church in the centre of Wenhaston. We call this field St. Peter’s Pightle. By March 2025 this had been planted with well over 3,000 trees and shrubs of 28 different native species. St. Peter’s Pightle is connected to Grove Woods by mature hedgerows except for a narrow gap where a minor road crosses.

We continue our search to create more wild spaces in the Blyth Valley.

In recent years the area has lost many elms, oaks, horse chestnuts, and now ash trees, to diseases. This means it is even more important to create new woodland. It is a big job but if lots of people are involved, nobody has to take on too much. If you would like to be part of this project, please contact one of us.

People love trees and trees are good for people. Our trees, hedgerows, woods and forests contribute significantly to the quality of life and enhance the local environment and biodiversity. They support economic growth through regeneration, help mitigate the impact of climate change, assist in reducing air pollution and provide important health and educational benefits.

logos doublestripPostcode Local Trust is a grant-giving charity funded entirely by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. Blyth Woods received £2,000 from the Trust for an Interpretation Board at Grove Piece.