The Woodland Way

A Permaculture Approach to Sustainable
Woodland Management

Ben Law

This is for everyone who loves trees and woodlands. Written from the heart by an innovative woodsman who is deeply committed to sustainability, this radical book presents an immensely practical alternative to conventional woodland management. Ben Law clearly demonstrates how you can create biodiverse, healthy environments, yield a great variety of value added products, provide secure livelihoods for woodland workers and farmers, and benefit the local community. He argues the case for a new approach to planning, encouraging the creation of permaculture woodlands for the benefit of people, the local environment and the global climate. Full of b/w photos and 13 colour plates. 256pp

Foreword to the Woodland Way

Ben’s brilliant book points the way forward for woodland management in the British Isles and beyond. It covers every aspect of what is in reality ‘woodland stewardship’, from both a practical and philosophical standpoint. Ben writes from the heart after long years of struggle with a whole host of naysayers who tried unsuccessfully to convince him by fair means and foul to give up his vision for a renaissance in the countryside. He has done what many have dreamed of doing: gone to live in his beloved Prickly Nut Wood in Lodsworth, and made a living from working close to nature. His book is a product of the profound wisdom he has gained from this experience and serves as a route map for others to follow. It is the best kind of read, both intensely personal and visionary, while at the same time immensely useful and full of handy hints for the many who share his vision. This book is set to be a classic and will surely mark a turning point in our relationship with woods and the natural environment.

Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud
Formerly Head of the Forests for Life Programme, WWF International.
Currently Head of the Business and Industry Programme, WWF International.

The Woodland House

As Featured on Channel 4's Grand Designs
Foreword by Kevin McCloud

Ben Law

Designed as a dual purpose book, it is both a volume for the armchair enthusiast and an inspirational guide for those wishing to build a similar structure. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 colour photos, this step-by-step guide shows how Ben built his home, hewn from his own woodland, for under £28,000. It covers the basics of self-building and gives full details of the evolving design process, the identifying of materials, costings, project management and the actual building stages, from foundations and frames, through to interior features. Includes roundwood engineering calculations. Hardback. 96pp

Available to purchase online via the Green Shopping Catalogue click book cover

Foreword to The Woodland House

Ben Law is an extraordinary man. Not exactly a warrior for his cause, more the quiet victor. Ben has proved that it’s possible to make a good living as an underwoodsman – coppicing, hurdle making and charcoal burning, simply by working hard and applying good commercial business sense. He’s also proved that it’s possible to design and construct an elegant, sophisticated and truly environmentally-friendly home from materials around you, providing you design with diligence and sensitivity. And he has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that great architecture need not be urban, or glamorous or loud.

I first met Ben when filming the third series of Grand Designs for Channel 4. We followed over a year the steady, measured construction of his house and watched coppiced chestnut being willed into a new form as a dwelling. It was clear then that because of Ben’s highly unusual planning circumstances and the exceptional nature of his job and skills that came with it, we were witnessing something rare; an event in building that doesn’t happen at all often. And in the three years since, we have not been able to find a project with the equivalent integrity of man, material and design. I suspect we won’t for a long time.

Sustainable is a word that in the last few years has become almost meaningless. It’s now so overworn a word, it’s become so floppy you can take it and stuff it with whatever you like: organic straw; urethane foam insulation or just hot air. Whenever I need to remind myself what the word really means, I think of Ben’s house and how we managed to make a film about sustainable construction whilst mentioning the word just once. Here is a house so ecologically sound, it breathes in time to the trees around it. Nearly every bit of wood in the place (and it is nigh all wood) grew in that forest and was coppiced. The subsequent coppice stumps or stools are now regrowing so fast and gulping in their youth so much carbon dioxide, that within a few years the environmental impact of constructing and living in this building will have been more than outweighed. Putting it into hard environmental language, this, in carbon terms, is an invisible house.

But it mustn’t remain too invisible because it’s also a beautiful house and one that answers eloquently to its setting. Ben has a shrewd eye for design, proportion and the subtleties of colour and materials. The result is a delightful building which appears as rooted as it can possibly be; one, that like all good architecture, responds intelligently to both its context and to human beings. Ben’s home has been made out of its very context, by him. You couldn’t find a house that has a more intimate relationship with people and place.

Kevin McCloud

The Woodland Year

Currently in Production

Ben Law

Ben's third book in which he invites you to enter the woodland year. He will take you through the seasons, highlighting woodland management techniques, wildlife and seasonal food, whilst following timber products through to their destinations.