President Margaret Donnelly was in the chair when Salwarpe WI met on April 13 to hear Roger Tolman, of the Woodland Trust, talking about trees in this country and the struggle to maintain and conserve them. For centuries forests and woods have been cleared and large tracts have been denuded; Dutch elm disease and the huge storms of 1987 and 1989 have also played a part recently and now there is a big drive to correct the balance and restore trees to the landscape. The Woodland Trust has some 1,100 sites all over the country, some big, some small; it conserves existing woods and also buys suitable land and plants new ones. In the National Forest it already has 11 sites flourishing. The favoured trees are English hardwood, like hornbeam and ash, but softwood is now being tried out on purpose-built power stations, a new venture. Pollarding and coppicing are being used as old and well-tried ways of wood maintenance and control. Many handsome slides illustrate this talk. The VOT was given by Rosemary Grave and Sheila Verity won the raffle.