Wood for Wales awards

A farmer who uses the trees on his land to build environmentally-friendly buildings today has scooped the £1,750 cash prize as the winner of one of Wales’s leading environmental awards.

Trevor Griffiths, who helps to run the family farm in Mitchel Troy, Monmouth, overcame tough competition from all over Wales for the prestigious Woods for Wales Award, organised by Forestry Commission Wales.

He set up a company called Low Impact Construction (LIC) to run alongside the day-to-day running of the farm, using his love of environmentally sustainable architecture design and traditional building techniques to create some of the "greenest" buildings in Wales.

LIC offers a complete building service with the emphasis on minimal impact on the environment. The timber is harvested locally using low impact extraction techniques and milled on site using a portable sawmill. Many of the environmentally friendly buildings have earth roofs and the company also uses local labour to harvest the trees and during construction.

The Woods for Wales Award aims to acknowledge excellence of a woodland project that best exhibits innovative use of timber or an outstanding example of sustainable woodland management.

FC Wales's Grants and Licences Business Manager, Richard Siddons, who was on the judging panel, said, "A notable feature of Trevor's company was the use of local forest timber to produce some unusual constructions for local use.

"He demonstrated sustainable, well-considered use of his woodlands and is a worthy winner of this year's award."

This year's runners up, receiving a cheque for £500, a certificate and a plaque, were Rob Dawson and Alithea Waterfield, who created a business selling pork from animals reared on a woodland they bought on a desolate hilltop in Evenjobb, Powys six years ago.

Since then they have planted more than 35,000 trees and set up Castlering Organic Woodland Pork, using the 35 acres of woodland where the Saddleback and Duroc pigs roam in paddocks as a unique selling point for their sought-after produce.