How we spend your money

We trumped our woodland creation target last year, getting 2,724 hectares of native woods in the ground – that's 10 square miles of vital new habitat. And we know exactly how many of you mucked in: 267,928 adults and children got to plant their own tree. The first saplings went in at Snaizeholme, our mammoth project in the Yorkshire Dales, where we're also restoring  three square kilometres of blanket bog, limestone pavement and riverside meadow.

In March, meanwhile, locals helped us plant the last of 120,000 trees at Brynau, outside Neath – our biggest ever new wood in Wales.

Our mission to breathe life into Britain's degraded woods forged ahead in 2022–23, and by the end of the year we'd restored 789 hectares – more than three times the previous year's tally.

Perhaps the stand out story was progress at Loch Arkaig, our internationally important Caledonian pinewood near Fort William. Here, a combination of heavy horses and the UK's first freshwater timber barge is making a dent in the 82,000 tonnes of Sitka spruce we must remove to allow the famous 'granny pines' to regenerate.

Every year our campaigns team fights for around 300 ancient woods and veteran trees in peril. Our successes in 2023 included saving the King's Spy Oak, an eight-metre-round garden goliath in suburban Reading. A Roundhead hideout during the English Civil War, it had been threatened by plans to build a single house.

In Scotland, meanwhile, our supporters helped win a huge breakthrough for woodland protection when Parliamentarians there passed strict new guidelines warning planners not to approve projects which destroy or damage ancient woods or veteran trees.

Thank you so much for campaigning with us.

This is the money we spent on running our backroom operation and recruiting new donors. We raised £5.44 in return for each £1 we invested in generating funds – 9% up on the previous year – and spent 86p in every £1 on our charitable objectives.