Garden and Green

Ancient Trees of British Isles Have a Friend in Irena
October 28th, 2008

Volunteer Irena Krasinska-Lobban from Alyth in Perth and Kinross has been presented with a top award from the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity.

Irena, 62 and a civil servant, has put her lifetime interest in trees and woodland to good use by supporting the Woodland Trust’s work on Ancient Trees in Scotland in her spare time.

She was presented with a cast bronze Volunteer of the Year medal by Woodland Trust’s expert verifier David Alderman and senior verifier Kath Owen under the autumn-clad boughs of the Birnam oak in Dunkeld, one of the most famous ancient trees in Scotland.

Irena’s medal is officially known as the Watkins Memorial medal, named after the Woodland Trust’s founder, Kenneth Watkins. It is presented each year to a volunteer considered to have made the most important contribution to the work of the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland tree conservation charity.

“I’ve had a lifelong interest in trees and woodland,” Irena said. “I think it stems from my grandfather who was the most amazing storyteller, in the great tradition of Highland storytelling. We’d walk together and he’d tell me stories about the Caledonian Forest. It all sounded fabulous to me.

“I wasn’t aware of actively learning with my grandfather when I was a child, or in the years since, but I seem to have been gathering knowledge about trees all my life,” she said.

Irena was nominated for her work in recruiting and supporting volunteer verifiers for the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Hunt, a five year project to record 100,000 of the UK’s oldest trees. These are the fattest, most gnarly and wrinkled of trees. After the first year of the project, tree fans and members of the public have found and recorded more than 20,000 ancient trees on the website, adding details like the size of its girth, photos and stories connected with the tree.

All trees submitted by members of the public are checked by one of the Ancient Tree Hunt’s expert verifiers. So far, around 11,000 of the 20,000 recorded trees have been checked by experts. Irena is a regional lead verifier in Scotland so as well as checking trees entered onto the website by members of the public, she helps to train and support other volunteer verifiers and also speaks on behalf of the Woodland Trust at outside events.

She has verified nearly 100 trees in Perth and Kinross for www.AncientTreeHunt.org.uk .

“What Irena has done is fantastic,” said Ancient Tree Hunt senior verifier Kath Owen. “She passes on her hints and tips for verifying trees, produces a newsletter to keep them all up to date and has designed a piece of kit which helps them all enormously. Her work to support the Ancient Tree Hunt and to look after the trees in Scotland is to be commended.”

Irena’s tree-measuring kit is a long piece of string and a map pin – a low-tech, portable and very useful way of measuring all the way around the girth of a tree when you don’t have a helper to hold the end of the tape measure!

“The Ancient Tree Hunt really does value her help,” said Kath Owen.

Irena was presented with her Kenneth Watkins memorial medal under the Birnam oak in Dunkeld, sometimes known as 'MacBeth's Oak'. It’s already entered on the Ancient Tree Hunt website as tree number 2422, and is known to be centuries old and a remnant of a great medieval oak wood – the legendary Birnam Wood, immortalised by Shakespeare in Macbeth.

However, it’s not Irena’s favourite tree. She has a real historical connection with another of the famous Scottish ancient trees.

“My favourite tree is Neil Gow’s Oak near Inver, a mile or so up the Tay from the Birnam oak in Dunkeld,” she said. “Neil Gow was a famous Scottish fiddler who is thought to have to have composed some of his best known strathspeys and reels under this tree in the late 1700s.

“I have known this tree since childhood as my grandfather's family came from Inver and one of my ancestors, a great-great-great uncle from generations back was taught to play the fiddle by Neil Gow himself. That makes the tree very special to me,” she said.

Irena was one of 13 volunteer award winners across the UK, but the only one to receive the Kenneth Watkins medal. Other accolades were awarded to

• John Hodges of Kent for recording many trees and researching their histories for the Ancient Tree Hunt

• David Orchard of Lancashire for woodland conservation work in George’s Wood, Bolton

• Michael Murray of Lochgilphead for long-term volunteer conservation work, and research into Crinan Wood in Argyll & Bute. Michael has also raised and planted a great number of tree seedlings for the Woodland Trust

• Lin Callard for tagging and mapping more than a hundred veteran and ancient trees in Glen Finglas, a huge Woodland Trust site of 4,100 hectares (10,121 acres) in the Trossachs National Park at Brig O’ Turk

• Friends of St Benedicts Wood for conservation work and encouraging the community to participate in St Benedicts Wood in St Helens, Merseyside

• Jayne Lewthwaite of Grantham, Lincolnshire for her behind-the-scenes volunteer office work supporting the Trust’s PR department and its volunteers register at its head office

• Brian McGleenon of Northern Ireland for filming the Woodland Trust’s children’s conference and other events

• Mike Wakelin of Lincolnshire for campaigning to raise funds to buy Banovallum Carr near Horncastle, and his support of the site’s community tree planting event

• Mandy Brilliant for supporting and advising the Woodland Trust’s Grant Applications team through eight important and complicated funding applications

• Dr Patrick Roper of West Sussex for researching and recording wildlife information about Brede High Wood, near Rye, West Sussex

• Sally Hepher of Essex for speaking on behalf of the Woodland Trust to hundreds of community groups, clubs and societies all over the county

• Richard Becker of Powys for photographing trees and wildlife around his farm near Llanidloes through the seasons and supplying the images to the Woodland Trust Photo Library through the Trust’s volunteer photographer scheme.

Credit: Woodland Trust

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