Amongst the planting of the wood we chose in particular 20 species of tree all of them native to these shores. This was guided by the Ogham or Celtic Language of the Trees whose origins lie with the tribes who migrated to Britain from the Continent around 700 – 500 BCE...

To those ancestors, the Trees were guardians of great wisdom. Mankind then lived in a much closer relationship to Nature than modern, civilized man does. The community’s literal survival often depended upon an ability to be “at one” with and to read Nature and her signs. For them, the characteristics of various trees reflected back the diversity of the world they lived in, whilst their annual cycles of growth and decay revealed inner truths about the workings of Nature and the cycle of Life, Death and Rebirth. And so from their understanding of the trees and their cycles, those ancestors gained a profound understanding of the forces at work behind and beyond the material world, an understanding that is encapsulated within the Language of the Trees. 

They encoded their wisdom within an alphabet of 20 letters bearing the name of a particular native tree. Each letter or tree has its own meaning, which was derived from their understanding of the nature of that particular tree. All of these trees are to be found somewhere within the If Not Now When Wood. Why not try to locate them all?

Further Reading:
The Tree Ogham. Glennie Kindred. ISBN 0-9532227-2-1
The Trees of the Celtic Alphabet.  HelenMcSkimming. ISBN 0-9520971-1-7
Tree Wisdom. Jacqueline Memory Paterson. ISBN 0-7225 3408-6