A new Woodland for Sefton Meadows

Our newly founded charity, the Jubilee Woods Trust, has recently created a new woodland at Sefton Meadows (the former landfill site) in co-operation with the North West Development Agency and the Forestry Commission.

The Jubilee Woods Trust has been working towards the creation of Jubilee woodlands across Great Britain for just over a year now. We aim to create new woodlands across the nation, and we use our small size to our advantage by offering a personal service that aims to create community woodlands tailored to each location. As part of this process the Jubilee Woods Trust draws on local history, heraldry and animal imagery to create the theme of each wood through series of consultations within local schools and in the general community. The result is a truly local feature that incorporates Art, environmental awareness and offers a wealth of educational and recreational opportunities in areas that may have faced decline and are in need of regeneration. The Jubilee Wood at Sefton Meadows is our flagship project and will be the first of 52 new woodlands across Great Britain.

The Jubilee Wood at Sefton Meadows is a 51 hectare site which has been planted with Scots Pine, Corsican Pine, Hybrid Larch, Ash, Rowan, Willow, Birch, Hawthorn, Guelder Rose and Dog Rose. A soft, mown and hard surface access path in the shape of a Barn Owl has been constructed through an area of 3.1 hectares and a 3.5 metre high sculpture of a Barn Owl has been carved for this site in Birchover Sandstone to represent the barn owls that have nested near the Sefton Meadows site in addition to being the animal chosen by local schools to represent the wood.

As part of the community involvement aspect of the Jubilee Woods Project, educational presentations and classroom discussions were carried out within 19 local schools followed by school site visits to plant trees and create clay sculptures at the Sefton Industrial Site where the owl sculpture was carved (these student sculptures will feature in an exhibition at the June launch of the project along with student drawings and writing). Since our educational programme began in the local area vandalism to the trees onsite has stopped completely to according to the Forestry Commission and local residents. Further to the Jubilee Woods Trust's consultation with Garry Rothwell, motor bike damage to the Jubilee Wood site has dropped to almost nothing.

The Jubilee Woods Trust has plans to involve local youth clubs and government youth initiatives with the project and is working towards the sourcing of a sizeable piece of land for a motor bike park with the assistance of the local council and police force to provide an alternative location for this activity and thereby provide additional protection to the new woodland facility and the general community.

The Liver Bird was carved into the plinth at the base of the sculpture on morning of Tuesday 6th May and on Wednesday, 7th of May the Lord Mayor of Liverpool and the Deputy Mayor of Sefton visited the site and voiced their full approval of the work of the Jubilee Woods Trust in Merseyside.