Picture the scene.
Its a beautiful sunny day as you arrive at the Woodland Skills Centre in Bodfari. Standing in the carpark you have trees to your back, a camp site to your left, workshop and gift shop to your right and a low wooden building in front of you. On being shown into the building its clear its built the old way, exposed beams, natural fibre walls and a large black wood stove in the corner (no need for that today). As your tea or coffee is being made its explained to you that you are now standing in Denbighshires very first Carbon Neutral building and the heart of the Woodland Skills Centre.
As we stroll back out after coffee you discover that the Woodland Skills Centre is a not-for-profit Social Enterprise. You learn that much of the site you are about to see is maintained by the participants on our Social Prescribing programme. Helping a wide range of participants with complex disabilities to make a real impact on the world you now see around you. We head first over to the workshop where are participants make a range of items from bird boxes and hedgehog boxes, for schools and conservation bodies, to signs and old style willow fencing and hurdles.
Back outside we turn passed the wood yard and down the sandy lane between the heritage orchard and the wild flower meadow we explain more of the amazing health and wellbeing that we encourage in all visitors; especially our social prescribing participants. We tell you how they tend the orchard, collect and store the wild flower seeds, and then plant them our in any one of our three poly tunnels and grow on more wild flowers to replant the following year. Growing far more than we need we also distribute them to other conservation sites. We point out the pond to your left, the educational tree walk, the hidden reading circle in the woods and inform you that the trip will show you what stands on the 10 acres of multi use land but there that there is also a further 40 acres of publicly accessible woodland behind us that we encourage you to enjoy after the tour. See if you can find the round house or publicly open woodworking shelter or any one of our three woodlands school sites.
Down on the lower part of the site you can already hear the chickens running around their enclosure, participants collect the eggs for cooking and for sale in the gift shop; we then head along to see the allotments. Some are private but the one we stop at is maintained entirely by our social prescribing participants who get to take home anything they grow; they also cook what they grow in our kitchen. Passing this years vegetables we stop in at the hidden newt pond before our next stop at the market garden and vineyard. The participants grow produce in the market garden for sale as veg-boxes in the gift shop and help tend the small vineyard.
As we stroll back around the sandy lane, at the back of the site, we pass areas that the participants have planted with trees and also some of this seasons hedge laying. Keeping the old skills and crafts alive is an integral part of our work here; in fact we run craft and skills courses for the public all year round.
Walking the back to the where we started, in the calm and peace of the site, we can listen to the birds and see just a glimpse of the amazing range of wildlife that now co-exists with us on this site.
We hope you’ve enjoyed your ‘virtual’ tour but if you’d like to see what we do for real, please come along to The Woodland Skills Centre in Bodfari and we’d be happy to show you around.
