Our team

18 June 2023

We have a truly amazing team that supports our directors.

We deliver and coordinate a vast amount of work and it’s the team that are behind us that really makes everything happen.

Here’s the Living Woods team….

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Over the past few years, Living Woods has planted thousands of trees across the North of England and has involved communities, businesses & schools in planting & caring for trees across the region.

Mark Shipperlee

Director

Mark has been in the North East since 2003, having been based in various parts of UK, and spending significant time on overseas development projects.

He comes from a background in countryside management, and now divides his time between working on small-scale woodland and forestry working, food growing projects for clients, and looking after his own small-holding where he grows food and also produces apple trees. He teaches permaculture design in the North East and also has taught it in Scotland and Romania.

He is passionate about local, regional and global sustainability and resilience, and also about bringing woodlands back into sustainable management in our own region – one of his key focuses within LWNE.

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Lara Young

Director and Seeds2Trees Project Manager

Lara is a newly appointed Director of LW, helping with governance and safeguarding issues, and is Project Manager of SEEDS2TREES. She says that her aim is to bring quality, excellence and safety in all that is done.

Lara loves community engagement and mobilising support to bring about the full potential of the team. She has worked in the health and social care sector, including 16 years involved in charitable organisations. She has also worked with children, young people and the elderly, and founded and managed a youth-focused social care business.

Lara says that the greatest motivation and greatest joy in her life are her three children and grandchildren. “SEESD2TREES is a way for me to bring about a change that will help them and future generations.”

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Michelle Morrison

Michelle Morrison PhD, Director

Michelle is a scientist with many years of experience in the environmental sector. Her work has included research, consultancy and innovation across multiple environmental sectors, from waste management to energy production, materials to nature-based solutions.

As an avid nature lover, Michelle is keen to work with and support Living Woods in its endeavours to care for, create more of and provide connection to, our wonderful native woodlands. Michelle’s contributions are focused on education about trees and wider environmental issues. She is also developing other activities associated with materials from coppicing and woodland management, working with academics, students and other organisations, to help deliver improved sustainability for woodland management.

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Laura Waugh

Community Woodlands Project Manager

Laura supports the Living Woods volunteers and manages the volunteer computer system which keeps the volunteering activity running smoothly. She enjoys using this platform to build community across the organisation through regular volunteer news and communication. She also works on the Living Woods ReKindle Project, leading volunteers in practical tasks to improve the health of our local woodland habitats and to produce material from them in a sustainable way.

Laura has worked with volunteers, young people and children in woodlands for 20 years, from leading Forest School, developing traditional skills heritage projects, starting community woodlands, running practical habitat management tasks to more recently focusing on how nature can support our wellbeing. She runs forest bathing events and teaches breathwork supported by nature. “I feel that trees support us in more ways than we know. The more time we can spend planting them, caring for them, protecting them and simply being around them, the better for everyone and everything.”

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Peter Downes

PROJECT MANAGER

Peter Downes has worked with volunteers in woodlands for many years now, in London’s ‘green belt’ countryside, on the West Coast of Scotland, in Northumberland at Ashington and Pegswood, and more recently in the Derwent Valley. He has also started a new community woodland project in Shilbottle in Northumberland.

Peter says he has seen just how beneficial woodland can be to people in many ways. “As the seasons change there is always something to see, something to do. I enjoy working for Living Woods, meeting new people and developing partnerships and projects with woodland owners.”

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Geoff Bockett

Director

Geoff is a trained horticulturist educated to M.Sc. level with over 40 years experience. His first assignment in 1989 was to work with local farmers in Cameroon, introducing agro-forestry techniques that would result in sustainable farming practices and hence protection of a vitally important, species rich, remnant of West African montane forest.

It seems fitting, 40 years later, that he is contributing to the Living Woods strategy to create, care for and connect people to woodlands in Northumberland where he lives. He understands how important trees and woodland are to improving everyone’s mental health and well-being and would like as many people to benefit as possible. Geoff has an infectious passion for trees and plants and loves sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm with others. He says: “There’s no well-being without nature’s well-being.”

When he’s not in the woods, you can find him on the Cumbrian fells like here in Langdale.

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Andy Gray

Director

Andy is a passionate conservationist, born and nurtured in the North East of England. He works as a professional tree planter in Northumberland, and in addition to leading our community tree planting days, he also organises and runs our Dwarf Birch Propagation project.

COME ALONG TO FUN EVENTS & IMMERSE Yourself IN nature

Over the past few years, Living Woods has planted thousands of trees across the North of England and has involved communities, businesses & schools in planting & caring for trees across the region.