The Deer Wood Trust CIC’s activities are categorised into 2 streams : Conservation Woodland Management (Native Tree Nursery) and as an Eco Venue for Outdoor Experiential Learning and Well Being (both with in-house teachers and external expert facilitators). The benefits for both mental and physical well-being of a safe, outdoor environment have been proven. This, coupled with enriching creative activities ,magnified these effects. The feed back from participants is across the board citing they feel relaxed, uplifted, inspired and with a greater connection to nature. ACTIVITES: 1. In-house courses that have been run include: Natural Paint making, Therapeutic Art Meditation, Forest Qi Gong and The Woodland Horticulture Course. 2. Regular creative well-being activities run by expert facilitators: Yoga well-being evenings, Fermenting and Sound Meditation. 3. Monthly, inclusive community (by donation) events include: Voice & Drum, and Meditation. 4. In house 1-1 sessions of: Therapeutic carpentry, carpentry and Therapeutic Art 5. Fair weather by donation community events: Personal Tours of our off-grid, sustainable lifestyle and the annual Bluebell Open weekend. 6. We have also been the host venue for transformative day retreats run by women’s groups, art events run by professional artists and Plymouth Uni held 2 days of eco therapy immersions for clinical psychology students. 7. We are now an approved host site for Wilderness Psychotherapy trainees to offer their 100 hours of practice. 8. Land Art activities and collaborations with 3 different artists, who stayed for short Artist’s residences in the wood, as well as continuing to use the space to develop their own practice and raise awareness of nature connection/wellbeing through creativity. CONSERVATION We have been concentrating more on the expansion of the rare native species in the tree nursery as the key part of our conservation work this year, investing in over 50% more species and numbers of stock overall. The final phase of the nursery expansion was completed for the containerised stock in time to accommodate this increase. A variety of this rare stock was also planted in the wood to increase biodiversity and replace many of the fallen trees from last year. We received a small amount of funding and donations towards the development and pilot of the Woodland Horticulture Course for Primary School Children called – WOODLAND HORTICULTURE 4 KIDS, which was successfully run in the spring of 2026 and led to us securing larger funding from the Lottery Environmental Fund. This means we are now able to roll this programme out to 7 local primary schools over the next 2 years. (From Oct 26 onwards.) This year we have sold approx 940 bare-root trees to local people and have continued to be a key source of expert advice for all our customers for tree care (Woodland Management Consultant), as well as on our social media platforms. VOLUNTEERING We have regular volunteer days to assist with the care and management of this woodland and all aspects of the tree nursery, this year the number of volunteer hours was around 960 (this includes in-house as well as external groups, green giveback from companies and individuals). We now have a regular volunteer who has learning disabilities, who greatly enjoys his quiet time in the wood helping in the tree nursery one morning a week. WIDER COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL WORK In our capacity as Woodland Horticulturalists we have continued as advisors and contributed to reports and local events to assist with positive, informed action for our local communities in this climate emergency. We are active members of NEED (Network of Environmental Educators in Devon) and are working closely with the Eco Advisor form Education South West with the development of the WH4K course delivery.

Our stake holders are the local and wider community, with particular focus on disadvantaged people and refugees. Consultation has been an on-going conversation with all our visitors, especially at Bluebell open Weekend, which has led to developing the themes each year to include family centric land art activities during this popular event. There was a lot of positive feedback for the pilot of Woodland Horticulture 4 Kids, with lots of press coverage and support from the community. We are developing the course based on the responses from both the children who participated and the parents and schools that we are working we with. This has led to new resources being co-created with the children and a pilot for a mini tree nursery on the school site. We have a monthly MailChimp newsletter and have asked for regular feedback on the events we hold and if there is anything else that the public would like to see Deer wood used for as a venue. We continue to integrate suggestions from the public and all our participants into the details of how we run our courses, our pricing system, developing new events, and ways of connecting more of the community to nature.

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration