April is a wonderful time to explore Finemere Wood. After a long, wet winter, the woodland is beginning to stir with life. The spring flowers bring a sense of joy. Clumps of primroses line the ride, their beautiful pale yellow petals casting warmth across the landscape. Tiny, blue violets are scattered like confetti amongst the undergrowth, and the bluebells are poised for a magnificent mass bloom. Yet it is the wood anemone that captivates me most.

Now, it is said this flower of ancient woodland will spread just six feet in a hundred years via its underground rhizomes, and yet in Finemere Wood I could swear that they defy the rules. For each year I notice large patches of these beautiful, white, star-like flowers in places where I have never seen them before.

The woodland workers have put down their saws now nesting time has arrived, and must turn their energies to other things. Whilst the winter task of clearing scrub and trees is well-suited to everyone, offering plenty of opportunity to work at your own pace and within your own limits, spring jobs are less so.

Among our ranks are those who are more machine than man, or indeed woman. These volunteers need jobs that are physically demanding, that up their heart rates, and that involve lots of tools. And so this elite group of human power tools is banished to the adjoining meadows to dig several three-foot deep holes. A fence is going up, and they are the muscle behind it.

Others opt for lighter jobs. A growing number of the team are nursing injuries; back, knee, shoulder and fingers. I hasten to add that none of these war wounds were acquired in our majestic wood, but instead stem from skiing, gardening secateurs, pub nights out, and rogue dishwashers. This eclectic group of walking wounded was recently joined by Estelle Bailey, Chief Executive of BBOWT, where they wandered the paths of the wood, clearing brambles and fallen branches, before slithering on their stomachs into a prickly hawthorn bush to retrieve an epidemic of tree guards.

And so, each person finds their place, offering what they can to enable this woodland to thrive. The wood in return nourishes body and soul, sending its caretakers back into the world renewed and grounded.

More than 1,700 volunteers help us towards our vision of more nature everywhere, on our nature reserves, at our visitor and education centres, in our offices and more.

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