Martin's Living Memorial - Planting trees

Hello.

It's Anne, Martin's Mum.

It's coming up to two years on 19th September since Martin took his own life aged just 20 years old and, in the process, changed the lives of so many others.

He is never coming back and we can't change the past, so we look to the future and will try to do something positive and lasting in his memory.

We want to raise funds to buy trees in The National Forest. This is a local scheme that has been running for 25 years and has just celebrated planting nine million trees! The original idea was to regenerate parts of the Midlands that had been neglected after decades of coal mining and heavy industry.

We have chosen to buy trees in this young forest as it is close to where we live and our family used to walk here with our dog, Fuzz. We have been buying trees to be planted for Christmas/birthdays in Martin's memory and will continue to do so. Others have also asked if they could contribute too, so we have set up this fundraiser.

It is nice to imagine a little piece of this forest as being 'his' forest! We hope that it will provide both a physical and a meaningful legacy. Martin himself loved nature, so we think he would have approved!

The trees are £15 each and are a mix of native species such as oak, lime, hazel, silver birch, rowan and wild cherry. If we hit our target of £600 we can buy 40 trees.

We hope that Martin's name and spirit will live on in these trees. He is part of nature now and we remember him and hope that he is at peace.