WHAT THIS COURSE WILL COVER

There are 3 native tree species we are going to cover in this mini-course. They are Ash, Hazel and Field Maple.

If you’re already familiar with these trees, I can guarantee that you’re still going to come away with some brand new nuggets of knowledge that will strengthen your overall Tree I.D. skills and the principles you learn here can then be applied to less familiar tree species. So, whatever your experience level, I think there’ll be something there for you.

There will be a video for each of these 3 tree species in each of the four seasons, so 12 video tutorials in all.

To accompany each video you’ll find a photo gallery with pictures you can download to supplement your learning. You will see pictures taken both on location and in-studio, so do take a good look through these after watching the video.

Also accompanying each video you’ll see a Tree I.D. Cheat Sheet. This is a downloadable pdf which you can take out to the countryside with you as a quick reference guide for identifying the trees covered here. These Cheat Sheets summarise the main points from the videos and also include photographs of distinctive identifying features.

HOW TO USE THIS COURSE

The course is split into four sections, one for each season; Winter, Spring, Summer & Autumn.

I strongly recommend that no matter what season it is outside when you start this course, that you do start by watching the winter videos first. There’s a very good reason for this, which I’ll explain in the introductory video to the winter tutorials. It can be tempting to skip ahead but, trust me, the winter videos will give you a good grounding which is then built on through the other seasons.

At the end of each season of videos there will be a short quiz which will test your knowledge based on what you’ve learned from the videos.

All the answers to the questions here are included in the video content so if you’ve watched all the video tutorials then you should have no problem. I’m not going to test you on anything that falls outside the course content, so you can relax.

The quizzes are simply a good way to cement your learning and summarise the main points. Plus, quizzes are fun, especially when you know the answers.

OWN YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Feel free to use the pdfs however you want, whether it’s as part of a nature journal or you bind them together as a pocket guide, make them useful to you.

And if you print them off and take them to the woods with you, please write all over them and make your own notes of the things you spot about the trees you find. When you begin to take charge of your learning that’s when real progression happens.

One last thing I want to mention, that’s really important, is that it’s essential that once you’ve watched the videos, I really encourage you to go out for yourself and cement your learning here with some personal experience. When it comes to identifying trees, online learning can only take you so far, it’s up to you to get out there and apply this learning to the real world.

As my bushcraft mentor liked to say, “Own your knowledge.”