FOR a conservation group which has been running for more than 20 years, the Joyden’s Wood Support Group has lost none of its passion and energy.

It was the overall winner of this year’s Bexley Environmental Challenge and has now been nominated as Bexley’s entry for the Green Project or Group category in this year’s Green Guardian Awards, being held at the Wyndham Grand, Chelsea Harbour, on February 26.

Joydens Wood is 314 acres of ancient woodland which straddles to Bexley and Dartford borders and it has been owned by the Woodland Trust since 1987.

It was previously owned by the Forestry Commission, which cleared huge swathes of the ancient woods and replanted them with Corsican and Scots pines and other conifers as well as beech and red oak.

Much of the group’s work has centred on tasks which will allow the ancient species to reassert themselves.

And the scale of its members’ work has been huge, despite the fact that most of them are in their 70s and 80s.

They are gradually thinning out the conifers, so parts of the woodland are now a healthy mix of native trees and patches of bluebells and lily-of-the-valley.

Clearing the woods of rhododendron and then keeping it at bay has been another mammoth task, without which large parts of the woodland would have been overrun and ground plants killed through lack of light.

As well as tree preservation orders, and designations as an Ancient Woodland, green belt land and a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation, Joyden’s Wood also contains a number of achaeological sites.

The most important of these is Faesten Dic a defensive structure which runs a kilometre through the woods and was built by the Saxons.

The woods are open to the public for walking and cycling, and most of the woodland management and wildlife improvements are done by the group with limited, indirect support from the Woodland Trust which, as a charity, has limited resources.

The group has also teamed up with other community groups and schools for projects and the impact of their work is demonstrated to anyone who visits the woods.