The tree might have stopped growing, but the spirit of the Major Oak lives on

Although seemingly inevitable and foretold by many experts, news that the Major Oak tree in Sherwood Forest has died after an estimated 1,000-1,200 year-life, has shocked and saddened people across the world.

Whilst I am among those people, and I’m sad to see it finally succumb, this isn’t just another history article – it’s a future one, because the Major Oak has many lives left to live, both in form of its literal offspring and social legacy in inspiring a new regeneration of Sherwood Forest.

Attracting attention from BBC Radio 4’s agenda-setting Today Programme, to national papers and broadcasters across the political spectrum and throughout the world – the Major Oak can easily lay claim to being the world’s most famous tree. This is affirmed in a very moving short film put out by RSPB, its current stewards, which ends with the line “legends never die”. Heard of a bloke called Robin Hood?

Sherwood Forest might also be the world’s most famous deciduous forest. These woodlands and (now very rare, but under restoration) low-lying heathlands once stretched up and down the county of Nottinghamshire. Sherwood now has its own official annual National Day on 20 February – the anniversary of the birth of Major Hayman Rooke in 1723, namesake of the Major Oak.

The Major Oak itself will be a name known for many more years yet – the heartwood of a fascinating history in this living place, it stands as a symbol not just of Robin Hood and rebellion, but as a symbol of Nottinghamshire and its natural history more broadly.

Today, many initiatives both highlight the historic extent of Sherwood Forest and celebrate what’s left  of it...

Sherwood Forest Trust is a charity running since 1995 dedicated entirely to the forest. They work to restore habitats, shining a light on Nottinghamshire’s unique natural heritage and all the ways in which we are still connected to it today. The Trust also supports community initiatives to replant it, growing on acorns and other seeds harvested from Sherwood Forest and the Major Oak itself, preserving and helping to continue its rich natural heritage.

The Woodland Trust recently announced that it’s working with the National Lottery Heritage Fund to kick-start an exciting new project called ‘Sherwood’s Living Legends’, which aims to safeguard the future of the ancient and veteran trees of the Sherwood Forest landscape, and all of the wildlife and history associated with them. So we can look forward to getting to know, and better preserving, many other majestic local trees.

There’s an upsurge of work at community-level to restore Sherwood Forest, with many groups growing and planting thousands of new trees across the county. Nottingham City alone has seen the planting over 50,000 trees. 

Sherwood People’s Forest Project is a century-long initiative launched by the Nottingham Open Spaces Forum. It aims to reconnect Nottingham City with its famous ancient woodlands by planting native trees across schools, community gardens, and open spaces.

One site that makes a part of this initiative is the city King George V Playing Fields and its Aspley People’s Forest project. Supported by the City Council, a range of local groups have lead green developments including over 5,000 trees planted – collaborators include Green Hustle CIC (of which this writer is a co-director), Nottinghamshire Treeplanters, national charities like Woodland Trust, Trees for Cities, business sponsors like E.ON, experts like My Square Meter and the Environment Agency and hundreds of community volunteers. 

At the end of May as part of Green Hustle Festival, a pop-up Sherwood Forest was created on Nottingham’s Old Market Square for a day, with around sixty medium and large trees being added to the Aspley People’s Forest and 300 seedlings distributed to the community by Woodland Trust and Sherwood Forest Trust. Community partners including Plant.NG, Wild Tree Nursery, several of my neighbours, and the ever-helpful local McNicol Tree Services contributed free woodchip.

The pop-up Sherwood Forest was intended to bring a woodland experience to the middle of the city, in a place often sardonically referred to by locals as ‘slab square’, before being homed in the north of the city, where the Woodland Trust’s Tree Equity Calculator shows amongst the most tree-deprived areas. 

A lack of trees indicates less access to greenspace and nature, meaning temperatures will climb during heatwaves, worsening flood risk for residents. As well as helping with all that, our trees produce the oxygen we breathe, drawing down climate-warming carbon dioxide, and collectively playing host to billions of birds and insects. Simply, we need trees.

The Major Oak itself, even in its long dying phase, will continue to enrich the biodiversity around and within it for hundreds of years – part of nature’s (nearly) eternal cycle of growth and death, recycling and regeneration.

Those of us who live, work and play in the city (or might do more with more greenery) can take hope in Nottingham City Council and other key city partners now putting our Sherwood heritage at the front of new plans. Their just-released Nottingham Vision plan includes a ‘Children’s Forest City’, a bold ambition to restore and link greenspaces around the city, building on the beautiful and widely-celebrated Green Heart and nature-led developments around Broad Marsh.

Nottingham has always been a ‘forest city’, but it’ll take community collaboration and a bit of good old fashioned pressure to make the fullness of that vision a reality. 

There are so many ways to get involved, from joining your local park’s Friends group and supporting green developments all over the city, to helping with tree planting initiatives, or even growing new trees from local seed at home – Canopy 2050 is a local project helping people just do that, with hundreds actively growing seed in their own back gardens.

Whilst headlines highlight the end to its growing stage, the Major Oak is a tree who will live on – not only in spirits and hearts, but in the many and varied lives it will continue to support in its dying days, its progeny, and its vital role in inspiring the many and varied community projects regenerating and reconnecting Sherwood Forest for future generations.

Maybe the Major Oak knows it can finally rest now, its work inspiring the next thousand years (almost) complete. Long live Sherwood Forest.