Fylde Memorial Arboretum

Fylde Memorial Arboretum and Community Woodland was opened on 23 February back in 2009. It’s a five and a half acre site dedicated to fallen service people and their loved ones.

Find it in the fields next to Moor Park School, on Moor Park Avenue in Bispham, Blackpool.

It’s purpose is to “Provide the Service Associations and the people of Blackpool and the Fylde with a place of peace and beauty in which to remember their fallen comrades and loved ones”. It’s the only one in the UK outside the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

About the Fylde Memorial Arboretum

The Arboretum began life as an idea of Don Aiken’s in 2008. Don was the Vice President of the Fylde Ex-Service Liaison Committee. He started out by wanting to plant a memorial tree to commemorate the D-Day and Normandy Veterans.

At the time the Forestry Commission were offering to fund the planting of woodland areas. They agreed to fund the arboretum, and Blackpool Council agreed to provide the land.

Fylde Ex-Service Liaison Committee opened it, with a central monument to commemorate the event. Trees were also planted for the displaying of memorial plaques.

On 23 April 2016 a special garden was opened to commemorate the Burma Star Association in Blackpool. It includes a stone monument bearing the words of the Kohima Epitaph and a piece of railway, symbolic of the infamous Burma Railway. There are plans to add a scale replica of the Changi Gate.

Special Features in the Fylde Memorial Arboretum

It’s run by the Arboretum Committee which has secured funding from various schemes to plant trees and lay paths.

The Arboretum includes a Services Glade where the Union Flag flies.

The Millennium Grove is alongside it, devoted to the memory of local people who have been killed on active service during this millennium.

The Jim Houldsworth Bower remembers the Major and champion of the ex service community who died in 2012.

In the remaining woodland anyone in the community can remember a loved one with a plaque set against a tree.

There are 2500 trees in the Arboretum, planted by the Forestry Commission, and available for dedication. There’s a variety of species of young trees, which, over time will grow into a mature, mixed woodland.