A PROTESTER who took part in a fight to save trees in Stroud over 30 years ago is urging people to keep planting trees.

Adrian Oldman was one of hundreds of people who took to the treetops in Stratford Park in August 1989 in a bid to prevent council contractors from felling them.

A camp was set up in and under the trees to provide a round-the-clock vigil to stop them from being cut down as part of works to straighten the road outside the new Tesco store.

The park’s owners, Stroud District Council, hired security contractors and joined police to try to evict the protesters.

After a dawn scuffle and a flare up of violence, the police called off the operation to ensure the safety of officers and the lives of the protestors perched in the treetops.

The Save the Trees group then lobbied SDC and the felling was cancelled.

The eight-week vigil was the first successful British campaign to save trees from being felled for road-widening purposes and news of it hit national headlines.

Twenty-five-years later, in 2015, Adrian Oldman helped to plant 10 new fruit trees as part of a community orchard at Sladebank Wood, off Summer Crescent, to commemorate the famous protest.

And this week, Adrian returned for the first time to see how the trees planted in 2015 were getting on and was delighted to see they were still flourishing.

“The planting of these trees was symbolic of the triumph of public opinion over bureaucracy and stubbornness a quarter of a century before,” he said.

“It was also a living symbol of our hope for the future. It still gives me a tingle when I see those Stratford Park trees still standing to this day, tall, strong and proud, 30-plus years later.

“With spring finally here, I wanted to go back to Sladebank Wood to see how the fruit trees were faring. Seeing them just coming into leaf, and likely to bear fruit for the first time this year, was quite emotional.”

Adrian is standing for election to Stroud District Council as Green Party candidate for Slade ward.