Update | Lime Tree Avenue fundraising

Earlier this year we asked for your help. 

We’re thrilled that you rose to the occasion and helped us by purchasing a raffle ticket during your visits to Charlecote this season. The money raised through the raffle has been for urgent tree works to the Lime Avenue in West Park.

These ancient lime trees – two distinct varieties, totalling 133 trees in all – are badly in need of arborial restoration and conservation work. The veteran trees are being managed to reduce the risk of them collapsing as their heartwood inevitably decays and their structures become weakened. We need to ensure that this area of the parkland is safe for our visitors, and it’s a crucial wildlife habitat for many birds, bats and thousands of insects.

Neil and his wonderful team from Midlands Arboricultural Services have been removing dead and unstable timber, and reducing the canopies at the top of the trees.  This will reduce the weight that the ancient tree limbs have to bear and improve the trees’ longevity.

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Tree work needed on Lime Avenue: We need your help!

This year we are fundraising to enable us to carry out tree work to our historic Lime Avenue. Many visitors are helping us reach our goal by purchasing a raffle ticket when they visit Charlecote.

But what exactly are we looking to do…

Our ancient Evergreen Lime trees – totalling 133! – are badly in need of tree work.

There are considerable weak branches and at the moment the avenue is closed to the public. The work will involve a specialist tree surgeon taking out the dead wood, pruning, branch reduction and reducing the height.

We are planning to undertake this work in the months between April to September 2016 – whilst avoiding key nesting seasons for our resident birds and our other wildlife. This will cost in the region of £25,000 so every raffle ticket sale help!

‘Capability’ Brown and Charlecote Park

2016 is a special anniversary year for two people we are particularly fond of…

William Shakespeare – who died 400 years ago. Quite a local celeb and, as I am sure you are aware, reputed to be a bit of a law breaker in his youth…

But the other chap, a fine Georgian fellow, is Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. He was born in Northumberland 300 years ago. Name sound familiar? Here is a little introduction…

‘Capability’ Brown played a role in landscaping the park here at Charlecote. His influence can still be seen in the parkland when you visit.

Tree-mail!

We love trees. We have some pretty special ones here at Charlecote. But what would you say if you were to write to a tree?

This news article was shared by the Woodland Trust on their facebook page.

The city of Melbourne assigned trees email addresses so citizens could report problems. Instead, people wrote thousands of love letters to their favorite trees.

Read more on citylab.com

It got us thinking. Which of our trees would we write to and what would we say?