No two woods are exactly the same, and no two owners have exactly the same approach, but nearly all owners enjoy using their woodlands to protect biodiversity, to learn about nature and woodland crafts, to share outdoor living with their friends and family, and often to provide firewood and other wood products.

Creating and protecting open spaces within the woodland to help light reach the ground is one of many activities that is helpful to the regeneration of neglected woods. It is satisfying and often hard work, using a chain saw, or scything with hand tools.

Every tree and shrub in any wood will just keep on growing. In continually thinning and coppicing, the owners have an abundance of poles for fencing and so forth, as well as almost unlimited firewood for their own and their friends’ stoves, or even for selling locally.

Families come to experience outdoor living and children have adventures and meet outdoor challenges. Owners become custodians of the plants, trees and wildlife and everyone is kept busy learning about nature’s seasons.

Many people revive crafts from the past, such as green woodworking. Others develop survival skills, like lighting fires without matches. Those who camp enjoy the total freedom not only to choose their pitch, but also to build their own campfire and cook their own meals.

On this website you can find photographs on many different pages of owners enjoying their own woods, and there are blogs and films of things you might do. Some owners have their own websites from which you can get a flavour of what they do. We have one diary of a complete year in Long Wood in Kent. And most recently, we have a survey report from owners who replied to a questionnaire from us in 2011.