Update August 2020 (and our current ongoing situation).   The Trust has just completed a renewal of all of the benches in the parkland.  While this is a great relief to the Trust, it does mean there will be little prospect of new bench co-adoptions in the next few years - unless a bench is damaged and needs to be replaced, which obviously we hope does not happen.  We have left this webpage live as it is a question we are often asked about and so it explains how we manage this aspect of our landscape.  We know that this will be disappointing to families who are looking for a special place in the Woods, but it is how we have found we need to manage things at the moment.  We get about ten requests a year for benches and so in ten years this would mean an additional 100 benches in Warley Woods, more than doubling the current number we have and this is not something that would be wanted or needed in the landscape.  We do usually do a number of celebratory tree plantings in February each year, if this alternative is of interest.  

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If you are interested in adopting a bench in Warley Woods, then it is possible to do this when one of our wooden benches needs replacing.  We are not planning on putting in any additional benches into new locations, just ensuring that we maintain the number of benches that we currently have.  The adoption would be for a minimum of ten years, and it could be for longer if the bench does not need replacing after ten years. 

For the foreseeable future, all "new" bench adoptions will be shared with a previous adopter.  This is because when the Trust started out managing Warley Woods we had no idea how long benches would last and we innocently offered twenty year adoptions.  We now know this was not feasible or sustainable for us to keep replacing old benches with new without additional funding, but we want to keep those promises to the original families - which means shared benches in the future

A bench adoption costs £1,000. The benches cost £850, a plaque around £80 and this leaves  a small amount of money for future maintenance. 

When the guaranteed adoption period has ended, we will approach families to see if they want to adopt the replacement. If they don't or, we don't hear back, we will put the old adoption plaque somewhere on site, so that it has a permanent home, if people come back to visit.

If this is something that you are interested in, please contact us (email [email protected] or 0121 420 1061) and we can let you know when a bench is likely to need replacing.  You can make payment through this website link when it has been confirmed, but payment does not guarantee bench availability.

Thanks for your interest.  We hope this plan will ensure even more families have extra special places to visit