In 1996, British publisher Felix Dennis planted a small wood near his home in Dorsington, Warwickshire, without any idea that it would grow into one of the largest privately planted forests in England. What started as a personal project soon turned into something far bigger. Dennis wanted to bring native broadleaf trees back to a landscape that had lost most of its woodland cover, and that first patch of ground became the seed of the Heart of England Forest.
By 2003, the ambition had outgrown a single landowner's efforts, and the Heart of England Forest charity was formally established to carry the project forward. The plan was simple in principle but vast in scale: buy up land across South Warwickshire, stretching from the old borders of the Forest of Arden down to the Vale of Evesham, and plant it with native trees such as oak, ash and birch.
