To help us prepare our wonderful site for the winter months, we need your help and will be having a Working Day on Saturday 2nd October 2010 from 10am until 12.30pm.

We hope our Guiders and parents will join us but we ask that all children be accompanied by an adult.

Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.

Please report to the reception tent. There will be plenty of jobs for all ages. Some tools will be provided but please bring any garden spades, forks, rakes, secateurs, pruners and shears and don’t forget your gardening gloves!

Dads with petrol strimmers will be most welcome and will probably get an extra biscuit or two.

You can print out the Working Day flyer (pdf) and put it on the fridge as a reminder.

Thank you for your help and we hope to see you on Saturday 2nd October.

It’s been a busy Summer at Willow Tree this year with us celebrating the Girlguiding centenary as well as hosting a successful jazz night and adding new features to the centre.

New Plants

Following the successful Work Day in May, Tendercare of Denham donated plants for the newly cleared beds.

Very many thanks to them for their support and to everyone who took part in the Work Day. Without the support of local business and our hard working volunteers, we wouldn’t be able to maintain the high standards our visitors enjoy at the Willow Tree Centre. If you’d like to get involved, you can read more on our volunteering page.

Willow Dome

Another new feature at the Centre this year is the Willow Dome. This was planted between the camp sites earlier in the year by Harrow & Pinner Division and is now a shady hideaway despite all the very dry weather we had at the beginning of the Summer. With the recent heavy downpours, we’re considering building an ark as our next venture!

Girlguiding Centenary

Centenary celebrations have been taking place at Willow Tree all over the Summer with all 4 divisions and the Trefoil Guild holding events with hundreds of Guides and Brownies attending. Click on the thumbnails to see full size photos.

How did you celebrate the centenary? Did you come along to any of the Girlguiding centenary events at Willow Tree? Drop us a line in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you.

Summer Jazz Evening

Over 150 people picnicked and were entertained by part of the Stardust Big Band as we hosted an open air jazz concert on a balmy evening at the end of June.

The evening was supported by Barclays Bank which provided the sound system and a team to manage the gate and organise parking. Once again, many thanks to Barclays and for everyone who supported a fantastic evening.

As part of our 10th anniversary celebrations, we’ll be holding a Midsummer Jazz Evening on Tuesday 29th June.

You can relax and enjoy the sounds of the Stardust Big Band in the beautiful surroundings of the Willow Tree Centre. Bring a picnic, a chair or rug, some friends and then sit back and appreciate an evening of midsummer big band jazz from one of the most popular jazz bands in North West London.

Gates open at 7pm and the show will start at 8pm. Tickets are only £7.50 and can be booked via Liz Overall on 01895 825375 or lizoverall@hotmail.com.

It promises to be an excellent night and we’d love to see you all there.

We’ve got a number of events coming up at Willow Tree over the next few months so get your diaries out.

Working Day – 7/8 May

To help us prepare our wonderful site for the Centenary Celebrations this summer we are having both a Working Evening on FRIDAY 7TH MAY  from 6.00 – 9.00pm and Working Day on SATURDAY 8TH MAY from 2.00 – 5.00pm.

To maintain the fantastic high standard of the Willow Tree Centre, we need lots of help with pruning, weeding and other general tasks. So please bring your units, parents bring your family.

Refreshments will be provided

We hope you will join us on either of these dates. Please report to the reception tent, there will be plenty of jobs for all ages. Some tools will be provided, but please bring any garden spades, forks rakes, secateurs, pruners, shears and don’t forget your gardening gloves! Dads with petrol strimmers will be most welcome.

To help us with catering, please email lizoverall@hotmail.com or let your Unit Guider know you are coming.

Quiz Night – 13 May

We’re having a quiz night Thursday 13th May at Willow Tree. Here’s a chance to show everyone how clever you are!

7.30pm for a 7.45pm start. Refreshments will be provided but if you want something a bit stronger bring your own bottle.

The event is part of our fundraising campaign and our friends at Barclays Bank will match all funds raised on the night so please come along.

More details and a downloadable application form can be found here.

Jazz Night – 29 June

To celebrate our 10th anniversary the Stardust Big Band will be playing at Willow Tree Tuesday 29th June. What better way to enjoy a lovely summers evening than with a picnic and some great music?

This will be a ticket only event and we’ll bring you more news in due course but make a note in your diary as it promises to be a fantastic night.

Welcome to the new look Willow Tree Centre website.

The Willow Tree Centre is a multi purpose outdoor centre set in 15 acres of private grounds. It’s a popular location for Guide groups and other youth organisations including Scouts, Police Cadets, Girls Brigade and Duke of Edinburgh expeditions wanting to take advantage of the three large, fully equipped campsites and local schools looking to expand their classroom activities into the great outdoors.

The new website provides you with information about the Centre including the facilities we offer, some of the activities you can enjoy at Willow Tree as well as all of the essential information you need to book your stay with us including our new online availability checker.

Over the coming months we’ll be updating the site on a regular basis with all of the latest news from the Willow Tree Centre and you can subscribe to our RSS feed. Subscribing is free and it ensures you never miss a thing. Every time we update the site we’ll let you know either through your favourite feed reader or via email.

Finding your way around the site is really easy. You can use any of the links at the top or to the left of the page and if you get lost you can always use our handy sitemap!

The site is designed to be accessible to all web users although if you’re using an old web browser such as Internet Explorer 6, you might want to consider updating.

We hope you enjoy the new website. If you have any questions about using the site or have any difficulties finding what you’re after please do not hesitate to contact us.

Finally we’d like to thank everyone involved in the development of the new website:

Anne Harvey, Christine Fellowes, Christine Mills, Dawn Palmer, Geoff Harrison, Jane Burgess, Julian and all the team at Vision Litho, Karen Harrison, Kathy Greaves, Lin Gregory, Liz Overall, Janet Burgess, Mike at Magic Bus Designs and Sally Pople.

Sarah Brooks from the 2nd Ruislip Windmill Rangers had an unusual Christmas this year.

Rather than sit on the sofa watching the Queens speech, she camped at the Willow Tree Centre to raise funds for her trip to the Joybells orphanage in India. Here’s what she had to say about her Christmas experience:

Christmas was very different this year but in a special kind of way! In order to raise funds for my ever nearing trip to India in March, I spent 3 nights (24th -27th Dec) under canvas at Willow Tree!

The snow made it extra special! We made every effort to make it a Christmas to remember; bacon and eggy bread for Christmas breakfast, my fave, followed by a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings cooked on the fire, the only difference being the turkey steaks!

Christmas Dinner...With A Difference

We had all the vegetables and even steamed some Christmas puddings in good old William and heated the mince pies in an old sweetie tin on the fire!

Boxing Day was equally as good with more turkey steaks and the traditional bubble and squeak! We decorated the shelter and our tent to make it festive.

We had visits from the British transport police, family and a few friends too which passed the time well. Even though the 5 layers of clothing helped, we spent the majority of our time warming up around the fire playing games and even a few songs were sung, including edelweiss, with the actions!

Thank you for all the support I have received, especially to my wonderful parents (some might say crazy!) who braved the cold with me! I can safely say this is a Christmas I will never forget!

It was all worthwhile because Sarah has now managed to raise the money for her trip to India but you can still send your donations to Tearfund or to the Joybells orphanage.

Everyone at Willow Tree would like to thank the band of volunteers from Lloyds Bank who gave up their time to help out at the Centre this month.

Although it was bitterly cold, everyone mucked in and helped get the assault course ready, cleaned out the shower blocks, tidied up the gardens, hosed down the walkways, cleaned the BBQ areas and made sure that everything was spick and span in the kitchen before enjoying a well deserved cuppa.

There’s a lot of essential maintenance work that needs to be carried out over the Winter to get the centre ready for the new year and it wouldn’t be possible without the help and assistance of our local community.

A massive thank you to everyone from Lloyds Bank who helped out. We ho-ho-hope you have a great Christmas!

More than 8,500 people using the Centre each year including local Guide and Scout groups, other youth organisations plus schools catering for those with special needs and/or physical disabilities. If you want to find out more about helping out at Willow Tree please visit our volunteering page.