We are absolutely delighted to announce that Caerphilly Woodlands Trust has once again been awarded the Green Flag Community Award for 2026/7 marking nine consecutive years since our very first award.
And that word ‘Community’ matters. This isn’t an award given to a paid team of park managers. It is given specifically to volunteer and community-run green spaces – which makes every single year we have held it even more remarkable.
Nine years. Nine springs, nine summers, nine seasons of planting, restoring, and nurturing Coed y Werin into the thriving, biodiverse woodland it is today, tended with quiet devotion by a small, dedicated group of volunteers who simply love this place. Every year, that love translates into something remarkable.
Coed y Werin generates an estimated £90,000 in public goods value annually, cleaner air, improved mental wellbeing, biodiversity, flood mitigation, and more, enjoyed by residents who may never know it exists, let alone who is responsible for it. Our volunteers will never see a penny of that value. But they show up anyway. Every single time.
That £90,000 figure isn’t guesswork. It is calculated using the same methodology employed by the Welsh Government to assess the value of public goods delivered through land management, drawing on natural capital and ecosystem services assessment, the Environmental and Rural Affairs Monitoring & Modelling Programme (ERAMMP) developed to inform Wales’ Sustainable Farming Scheme. It measures the real value of things like carbon storage, clean water, flood mitigation, biodiversity, and landscape quality, benefits that markets don’t pay for, but that communities quietly depend on every single day.
That is what this award really represents.
Wales still faces serious ecological challenges with 1 in 6 species at risk of extinction but Coed y Werin stands as quiet, living proof that communities can and do make a difference. Every native tree planted, every hedgerow restored, and every young person inspired to connect with nature is part of a legacy now nearly a decade in its recognition but over two decades in the making.
Volunteers across Wales contribute an estimated £757 million in time every year and your contribution here, year after year, can’t be counted in money alone because it is truly priceless.
We also want to extend our heartfelt thanks to the assessors from Keep Wales Tidy who give their time and expertise year after year to come and judge our site. They too are volunteers, giving freely in exactly the same spirit that drives everything we do at Coed y Werin. Without their dedication to upholding the standard, this award would mean nothing. Thank you.
“As Chair, I want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has ever pulled on their boots and shown up for this place. You will never be paid what you are worth. But I hope you know that what you do here matters more than most people will ever realise.
This award, as it always has been, belongs to you.”
Jayne Garland – Chair
Caerphilly Woodlands Trust
And as for 2027, we already have one eye on it. Our tenth anniversary of the Green Flag Community Award will be something very special indeed. Watch this space!
Here’s to year nine and to what promises to be an unforgettable year ten.
