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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Gardening: Writer tells story of Pooh’s forest home

An 80th anniversary edition of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Milne, inspired by London’s Ashdown Forest, wrote on the Hundred Acre Wood. (Courtesy photo)
Pat Munts Correspondent

The Hundred-Acre Wood is alive and well and real.

For anyone, myself included, who loved the adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin, this is a very important bit of information.

Last week while attending the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle, my friend Linda and I attended a talk by Kathryn Aalto on her new book, “The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood” (Timber Press, 2015). Turns out A.A. Milne’s imaginary Hundred-Acre Wood was inspired by Ashdown Forest, a wildlife haven that spans more than 6,000 acres near Sussex, 30 miles southeast of London.

Kathryn Aalto is an American writer who calls England home. She writes and teaches about the intersection of culture and nature, designing gardens and writing about the natural world. She is on tour around the country, talking about her book to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the publication of “Winnie-the-Pooh” in 1926. She will be speaking in Spokane on March 3 at the monthly meeting of the Inland Empire Gardeners at CenterPlace in Spokane Valley.

Ashdown Forest has a long history. As far back as the 1600s, it was part of the English system of common lands where nearby residents gathered firewood, pastured animals, cut bracken fern and hay for animal bedding and feed, and yes, harvested honey. This process kept the forest healthy by renewing the trees and maintaining the open spaces.

The Milne family owned a country house just outside Ashdown Forest. They would travel down from London each weekend and for long summer vacations. The real Christopher Robin would play in the forest close to his home and in doing so inspired his father to write of his childhood adventures with Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Owl, Kanga and Roo. Pooh’s house was in a large tree that still sits at the edge of the forest. Christopher Robin and Pooh built a lean-to house for Eeyore, just as people still do among the groves of trees. The Poohsticks Bridge had to be rebuilt recently, so the engineers built it to resemble the one in E.H. Shepard’s illustration in the book. People still find sticks in the woodland and drop them off the upstream side of the bridge to see whose comes under the bridge first.

Author Aalto will discuss not only the forest as Pooh and Christopher Robin knew it but also its natural history. The Ashdown Forest is at the heart of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and has been declared a natural preserve to protect a number of rare insects and plants within its boundaries. Most of the forest’s 6,500 acres are covered with heath, a scrubby relative of heather that blooms through the year. The remaining land is covered with hardwoods and pines that figure into the Pooh stories.

Pat Munts is the co-author of Northwest Gardener’s Handbook with Susan Mulvihill. Munts, a Master Gardener, has gardened in Spokane Valley for more than 35 years. She can be reached at pat@ inlandnwgardening.com.