West Stormont Woodland Group

West Stormont
Woodland Group

Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) SC051682

Join us today to bring Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into community ownership

Community Monthly Update – October 2022

This has been a very busy month for the the board. You'll see we've elected a new board of Trustees who have worked tirelessly throughout the last few weeks to prepare the Community Consultation for the WSWG project. This is the next key moment as we move forward towards bringing these two woods into Community Ownership and its success will depend upon the support of the communities in which these woods are situated.
West Stormont Woodland Group

Artists impression of proposed Taymount Wood Hub area. Thanks to Courtney Cooper, Perthshire Nature Connections Partnership.

What has WSWG been doing this month?    

So we started with a New Board of Trustees. You can follow the link to learn more about your Trustees. They are:

  • Shonagh Moore – Chair
  • Andrew Lear – Secretary
  • Elspeth Coutts – Membership Secretary
  • Alan Ross – Ecologist and Treasurer  
  • Bob Talbot – Funding
  • Betty Abbott – Trustee

We’ve had a useful meeting with Elyn Zhang of the Scottish Land Fund this month and Andrew Lear, our secretary, supported by three other Trustees, did a wonderful presentation on this project to the Community Woodlands Association Annual Conference at the Birnam Institute.

But our main focus has been, without doubt, preparing the Public Consultation which launches this Monday October 17th.

So what is this Consultation all about?    

It represents the fruits of all the work we have done to date, including our important consultation with you all last year, which has crucially informed the final Proposal. And the Proposal, which will be available on the website from October 17th, will form the basis of our CATS submission, the next stage in the process. Your support for the project, as demonstrated by the response to the Consultation, is critical to that submission.

The project plans for Taymount and Five Mile Wood are designed to provide a benefit to the Community in which they sit and having the support of that Community is a fundamental part of demonstrating to the sellers and those who control the funds that this Community project, our Community project, should go forward.

WSWG Community Consultation opens Monday 17th October    

We’ll pop an emailed invitation out on Monday morning when the Consultation period opens with a couple of reminders throughout the fortnight that it’s open.

Word of the Month

That’s it this month. Just a great big THANK YOU for being part of this extraordinary story. We believe we can bring Taymount and Five Mile Wood home for our Community.

What’s coming up next?

By this time next month we’ll have the results of this final Community Consultation and be able to gauge if we have enough support and enthusiasm to take the project to the next stage. So watch this space!

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Previous Articles

Community Monthly Update – November 2023

We are really thrilled to let you know that Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) has approved WSWG’s Revised Wildwood Proposal and Business Plan for Taymount Wood. This is the first big goal achieved in our Community Asset Transfer Process to bring Taymount and Five Mile Woods into community ownership!

Read More »

Community Monthly Update – October 2023

A highlight for the WSWG Project this month has been the timely teaming up of a group of employees from Aviva in Perth with some unexpectedly lovely autumn weather for a day of corporate volunteering. On 2 October, five enthusiastic Aviva colleagues spent the day with WSWG in the middle of Taymount Wood on a range of interesting and very useful tasks, quite a contrast to their usual office based working environment.

Read More »

Community Monthly Update – September 2023

Given the distinctly seasonal change in the weather of late, we thought we would bring our Word of the Month up to the top of our September update. Psithurism: (Noun) The sound of wind in the trees and rustling of leaves, from “psithuros”, the Greek word for whispering. Enjoy your woods this autumn!

Read More »

Community Monthly Update – August 2023

This month we really want to share with you a wonderful event we had – the joint woodland picnic on 22 July with Tayside Woodland Partnerships (TWP). We pitched our gazebos in a lovely grassy glade in Taymount Wood and set out a delicious picnic spread courtesy of Alison’s Kitchen in Blairgowrie – quiches, sausage rolls and cakes galore – on portable tables kindly lent to us by Stanley Village Hall. More food and home-baking was brought by the picnickers themselves. Despite weather forecasts to the contrary, it was a beautiful day with not a drop of rain or drizzle. After lots of great chat and good food, we heard a little about each of our organisations’ respective projects and then took a walk up the main track to King’s Myre Loch.

Read More »

Community Monthly Update – July 2023

First up this month is for us to say a big thank you to a lovely group of young people from Ochil Tower School in Auchterarder who had come on a mini-bus trip to visit Taymount Wood on 21 June … and just did a litter-pick whilst they were there!! What a great example of being good citizens – enjoying the environment and taking care of it together.

Read More »

Community Monthly Update – June 2023

We want to start with a big thank you to all WSWG volunteers who helped in the Wildflower and Mining Bee Rescue Mission this spring. Many times more wildflowers have come through along the various stretches of raked verge than would have been the case had they remained swamped by gorse mulch and, as seen in the photo here, mining bees have successfully emerged where the track surfaces were cleared to help them out too. And of course the cleared sections of track make for more comfortable going again for walkers and dogs. Lots more areas still need attention, and we will keep doing what we can when we can, but thank you again to everyone who helped make a difference for nature this spring.

Read More »