Lesbian power couple Sandi and Deb Toksvig, not content with entertaining the nation (the former) and being a psychotherapist (the latter), bought an ancient woodland.
As you do.
And, as you can see in Sandi’s Great British Woodland Restoration (known as Sandi’s Wood internationally), they need to restore it.
What they’ve bought is beautiful but overrun by holly (one of only two plants Deb could identify at the start of the film – the other being grass) and the trees are too over-crowded for other life to thrive. The pair, along with a band of merry helpers, set about restoring this ancient woodland so that it can become the haven for nature and hope for the future it needs to be.
At one point, Sandi talks of the meadow in the woodland being “calm in a frantic world”, but you could equally say that about this documentary series. I heard about it by accident but it soothed me through a rough and painful weekend.
Sandi describes the woodland as “Luscious green in the summer, and magical ice forest in the winter”, and the couple’s growing awareness of the importance of the seasons is fascinating. They have to fell trees before the birds start nesting, and they don’t want to remove the trunks in a way that damages the soil. There’s so much to consider and, as they learn, so do we.
This programme is informative but not preachy. Even the little information cards about different species get a little humour in.
Sandi and Deb themselves are a core element of why this show works. Sandi is incredibly well known as the host of QI and formerly of Great British Bake Off, but she’s been in the entertainment industry for decades. Debbie, less so. We might have known she existed, but we’d seen little of her, until now.
And thank goodness we do get to see her, because I’m so glad we get to witness this relationship in action.
They are, frankly, adorable.
Sandi and Deb Toksvig make each other laugh, they flirt, and they support each other through the funny bits, the scary bits, and the sad bits of this gargantuan process.
We know Sandi’s funny (“Please don’t let me die of koala chlamydia pneumonia”, she says she thought when terrifyingly ill in hospital, “because the Daily Mail would never get over it”), but Deb is too, and the couple’s thrill at handling power tools alone is a sight to savour. Lesbians and chainsaws are, it seems, a match made in heaven.
Sandi and Deb Toksvig’s love for each other and of this epic woodland project, and their fascination with every little fact they learn and every moving moment they witness, make Sandi’s Great British Woodland Restoration an easy but meaningful watch.
We learn that 93% of UK woodlands are in poor ecological condition, and the ongoing problems with fly tipping and bikers disrespecting the space risk bringing Sandi, in particular, to despair.
What’s the point in trying to save this oasis when there are people proactively damaging it?
The couple did not buy a woodland as a vanity project, they bought it because, as a 20-year patron of the Woodland Trust, Sandi feels strongly that things have to improve for nature to stand a chance. That restoring one tiny bit of it can provide hope and inspiration to others, who can do the same.
Which is why they keep going, getting help along the way from both experts and enthusiastic volunteers.
The Toksvigs make a compelling case for the importance of preserving, restoring and enhancing ancient woodlands; I was certainly convinced, determined to do more to check out the 70 ancient woodland sites in my own city, accessibility permitting.
Sandi’s Great British Woodland Restoration is wholesome, it is funny, it is beautiful to watch, it is endearing and it is informative without being preachy. This programme provided me with some much-needed comfort on a cold, painful weekend, and I have evangelised about it to everybody who’ll listen.