The news that the London Wildlife Trust has been awarded £699,000 in Lottery money to revive The Great North Wood comes at a moment when many of us are thinking of getting out of the city if we can. It’s that time of year, when we wipe the smog from our brow to spend a couple of weeks re-connecting with a more natural way of life. Beach, hilltop, woodland — it doesn’t matter, so long as we leave the busy workings of humanity far behind.
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Confusingly, The Great North Wood is in fact in south London. At one time it stretched from Deptford to Selhurst, a vast forest that now survives in scraps: as single great trees but also, in places, such as in Sydenham and Streatham, as slightly larger fragments of ancient woodland. The Trust and its volunteers will be creating and nurturing new stepping-stones of nature right across the old Great North Wood — all designed to encourage the freeflow of species.
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London itself is officially termed “a forest”. There are more than eight million trees here, helping to cool the air and soothe our nerves. Of course there are parts that are leafier than others, and there’s very little in the way of fertile underscrub; a flourishing forest is more than just a collection of trees. But London has woods that can be classified as genuinely “ancient” — ones that have been in continuous existence since 1600. And every year, more trees and woods return.
