Tree Amble

Matson Ground is a traditional Lake District Estate with house, gardens and cottages (some available as holiday accommodation) a few small offices and about 500 ha of organic farmland situated just south and East of Windermere in the Lake District. In this Tree Amble episode we meet Madelaine who is the current owner of the estate which came into her family 100 years ago. We also meet Pete Webster - farm manager - and Luke Steer - woodland adviser. We talk about managing the estate and the new wood pasture project emerging under Luke's guidance.

Hedgerows / People's Trust For Endangered Species / Habitats / Conservation

In this episode we meet Megan Gimber from the People's Trust for Endangered Species where she has worked since 2015. She is a self confessed hedgerow geek and has developed and manages two hedgerow survey for PTES. The Great British Hedgerow and Healthy Hedges. We meet and walk on a Cumbrian farm in July 2024.

Urban Gardening / Scouse Flower House / Postcode Gardener / Liverpool

Tree Amble was invited to attend a conference hosted by the Chartered Institute of Ecological and Environmental Management in Liverpool in 2024. The idea behind the conference was to ask questions about how we engage people and landscape to restore both elements - how do we connect people with their environment and how do we restore biodiversity in tandem. This episode is full of urban voices with experience thrown in from gardeners, foresters and ecologists. We also take a tour around Liverpool looking at the amazing wildflower sites which Scouse Flower House have promoted. 

Wellbeing / Community / Vegetables 

We met with Paul Cambre at the Growing Well plant nursery at Tebay Services to discuss the work of Growing Well and their recent move to create more projects at Tebay and Egremont in Cumbria. This fabulous charity works with people to improve their mental health and wellbeing through programmes based in cultivation of vegetables. Paul's experience and enthusiasm runs through this thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting chat. Please listen and enjoy!

Beavers / Re-introduction / Farming with Nature 

We had a lovely meeting with Chris on our Oxford Real Farming podcast and decided then to have a longer follow up chat with him - and here it is. Because we are geographically about as far apart as we can be in England this chat was over TEAMS... the joys of modern comms! Chris is very much the farmer but as you'll hear in this conversation he absolutely sees the value in and of farming with nature. He has brought back those amazing eco engineers, beavers, to his Cornwall farm and clearly loves it! Please take a listen.

Lentils / Dal / Protein / Legumes / Climate positive Agriculture

Welcome to a delicious edition of Tree Amble! In July we headed off to the second annual Dal festival on Wakelyns Farm in Suffolk. David and his team, with support from Hodmedods, started growing lentils in their agroforestry system in 2023 and held their first Dal celebration in 2023. We joined them to celebrate the second festival and on the way got to talk Dal with 5 chefs creating dishes fom India, Africa and Afghanistan as well and climate and diet with some of the 150 people attending. We hope this edition gets the taste buds going!  

Rivers / River Restoration / Habitat Creation / Fish / Climate Change 

In this episode of Tree Amble, the first of Series 4, we meet George Heritage who has made a career out of understanding rivers and now works to restore them for biodiversity and water management and we go out to the riverside with a team from West Cumbria Rivers Trust and volunteers to monitor a stretch of river for its fish population. Jonny and Ruth use a method call "eclectro fishing" to count fish of all sizes in a stretch of river and then, through repeat surveys see how fish populations change over time and over the catchment. They can easily see the effect of poor habitat or pollution incidents and then work to change it with farmers and land owners. 

In other words this one is all about rivers and what we can do to help restore and revitalise them. Have a listen!

Landscape Scale Restoration / Community Projects / Upland Scotland / Rural Community 

In this Tree Amble episode we hear from a range of great people engaged on landscape scale restoration in North West Scotland - notably on the Assynt Foundation land and the Woodland Trusts Loch Arkaig woodland restoration project.

We hear about community engagement, tree planting and woodland management, specialist kit removing timber across lochs, living and working in remote communities and wild life management. 

We hope you enjoy this Tree Amble into the far north west! 

Organic Dairy / Milk / Manging Organic Land / Bore Place 

In this Tree Amble we meet Dan Burdett who is the farm manger on the 500-acre regeneratively managed historic estate of Bore Place, an hour south London. Dan is an experienced organic dairy man with his feet in two farms - we meet him at work at Bore Place. 

The farm's focus is on organic farming and regenerative land management whilst supporting people to live happy, fulfilling, and sustainable lives. It offer educational programmes for school children and young people, holiday stays, group retreat accommodation, marked trails to explore the estate and farm, and a programme of public events.

The recording on this podcast is a little marred by the dairy chiller in the back ground.. but, hey ho - it shows we were where we said we were! 

Trees / Veteran Trees / Ancient Trees / journey on foot 

Martin Hügi took a four-month sabbatical to walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Dubbed the ‘Tree Pilgrim’ he set out to meet thousands of incredible trees on his special journey. He wanted to spend time connecting with some of our oldest living things in the countryside - to learn more about them and the people and landscape around them and to bring about a greater level of protection for them. Martin accepts that he is obsessed by trees.

Did he get to John O'Groats... well no... he didn't but he had an amazing journey none the less...!