Much earlier this year we received free trees from The Conservation Volunteers and intended planting them. The weather turned against us, not rain and snow, but heat. It marked the start of a long very hot summer when the ground dried out and tuned into concrete. Had we planted the trees then, they would now all be dead.

Instead, they were given care and attention in David Curnow's raised vegetable bed where they thrived. October, November is the optimum time to plant trees and we'd planned to plant them last week but the torrential rain put a stop to that. The trees are all native - oak, alder, hazel, beech and hornbeam. We added in another volunteering week and 11 of us came out on a beautiful Autumn morning to plant, stake, protect and mulch the new trees. We hope we've given them a fighting chance to survive.

We finally installed the Queen's Green Canopy plaque once the job was completed.