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Do It Day #treesfortrees Dennis Publishing

Wood planted on Do It Day named ‘Ducie’s Wood’ by 5 year old winner of Dennis Publishing's challenge

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By Jessica Goodfellow, Media Reporter

December 21, 2015 | 3 min read

Today (21 December) Dennis Publishing announced wood they planted as part of The Drum's Do It Day will be called Ducie's Wood.

Dennis Publishing worked in collaboration with Heart of England Forest to launch the #treesfortrees campaign on the 2nd November, which saw 10,000 trees planted in one day.

A winner was chosen at random from the contributions, with the prize of naming the wood. The winner, 5 year old Kitty Hawkings from Turnbridge Wells in Kent, was chosen for her hand-drawn picture of an oak tree.

Kitty has chosen to name the wood Ducie’s Wood in memory of her great grandmother, Gladys Wood, who died just days after the picture was crowned winner of the competition. Kitty chose to name the wood Ducie's Wood, to “honour her much loved and missed relative” and to “keep her memory alive for generations to come”.

James Tye, chief executive of Dennis Publishing, told The Drum that the history behind the forest’s name encapsulated the powerful yet simple concept behind the challenge, i.e “a very big project coming down to one very personal thing at the end”.

Putting aside the actual logistics of getting a tenth of the year’s planning done in a single day, the project has got to have raised awareness," claimed Tye. "We had cinema ads running up and down the country alongside outside billboards in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus as well as thousands of children submitting pictures and drawings on social.

The challenge was set by The Drum’s Do It Day to raise awareness of the lack of woodland cover in the UK. As part of the campaign, one tree was planted in the Heart of England forest for every picture, photo or representation of ‘what a tree means to you’ sent via email or social media using the #treesfortrees hashtag. All the images sent in were assembled into a ‘virtual forest’ on the website set up for the campaign; www.treesfortrees.co.uk where entrants could see their contribution in a real scale.

The last step and the "most difficult one is to get our customers engaged and I think we’re just starting to see that permeating through," claimed Tye.

"The question for us is do we take what we have on build on it [for Do it Day next year] or do we try something new. My current extinct is we're going to take what we've got and build on it. With a longer run up i think we can create an even bigger impact."

Regardless of what it does, Dennis is also working to bring to life two of the other ideas it sourced from Do it Day's feeder event Plan it Day.

Do It Day #treesfortrees Dennis Publishing

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