Our History

Fred Hageneder has collected wide-ranging material on trees for over twenty years, and so far has published six books on this subject, among them 'The Spirit of Trees – Science, Symbiosis and Inspiration' (Floris Books, Edinburgh 2000), 'The Heritage of Trees – History, Culture and Symbolism' (Floris Books, Edinburgh 2001), 'The Living Wisdom of Trees' (Duncan Baird, London 2005) and 'Yew – A History' (Sutton Publishing, Stroud 2007). (For more information see Fred's website Spirit of trees)
In May 2002 Fred and his German publisher, Andreas Lentz of Neue Erde ('New Earth'), formed 'Freunde der Bäume' (= Friends of the Trees, www.freunde-der-baeume.de) fulfilling the idea of establishing a charity to protect trees in a 'sacred' context that is pan-religious and pan-spiritual.
As soon as the German group was legally established the idea was extended to the UK. The inaugural meeting took place on March 23, 2003, on which date our aims and objectives were phrased. We applied for charity status and it took the Charity Commission 'only' eight months to do the paperwork. We've been granted official charity status on November 24, 2003.
With two of the trustees – the chairman and the secretary – also being founder members of the Ancient Yew Group (AYG, see www.ancient-yew.org), a tiny, independent but spear-heading research group in (ancient) yew trees with absolutely no funding from anywhere, it was inevitable that the proportion of 'yew work' inside the Friends of The Trees would grow. In 2005 we created a second bank account (again with the ecological Triodos Bank in Bristol) called the Friends Of The Trees Yew Fund. This budget is reserved to help saving threatened yew trees and to support our efforts to stimulate authorities to give legal protection to ancient trees.
Next AGM (Annual General Meeting) in August or September 2008.

Trustees at present (January 2008):
Fred Hageneder – Chairman
Paul Greenwood – Secretary
Scott Messenger – Treasurer
Sam Bloomfield
Elaine Twilley


Annual General Meetings – Minutes for download:
AGM 2004
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Download Rich Text Format (.rtf)

AGM 2005
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AGM 2006
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AGM 2007
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