A century of care: Wildlife Trusts mark 100th birthday with woodland project

Steve Collin of Norfolk Wildlife Trust on the newly acquired farmland at Wood Norton. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

The place where Norton Wood once stood is now a vast field of decaying wheat stubble. The ancient wood was grubbed up during the second world war. No trace of it remains – on the surface, at least. This ghost in the landscape lives on only in the name of the local village: Wood Norton.

But trees will soon be bursting upwards again and the wood will regrow after Norfolk Wildlife Trust celebrated its 100th birthday by buying a swath of farmland to revive for nature.