I have hugged smelly hippies. I have hugged lunatics. I have hugged Hells Angels, drug addicts, drunks, victims of Aids and even ex-wives.

Last week I went over to the dark side and hugged a tree. Yes, I stood with my arms wrapped around a slim silver birch and a little voice inside my head cried: “Help. I’m turning into Sting.”

I’ve always thought of myself as an eco-sceptic who hated any kind of sentimentality towards nature. Whenever I hear the word “tree” I reach for my axe – or so I used to boast. When friends told me about the wonders of walking in the woods I was dismissive. Woods? Public toilets for bears.

How did I end up embracing not only a tree but a campaign, launched last week by the Woodland Trust, to create a new natural woodland?

The project is simple and bold. The trust wants to buy 850 acres of Hertfordshire countryside between St Albans and Harpenden, plant 600,000 trees (including oak, ash, hornbeam and field maple) over the next five years and thus create the biggest natural continuous forest in England.

Toby Bancroft, project manager of the Woodland Trust, tells me: “It will be amazing. Imagine a beautiful woodland that will be nearly twice the size of Sherwood Forest.”

Steve Marsh, another trust worker, adds: “It will be bigger than London’s 770-acre post-2012 Olympic park.”

“Size isn’t everything,” I say as we stroll down a slim country lane and into a slice of woodland.

Steve tries another tack. “Think about the benefits this forest will bring for everyone. Walking through a woodland is great exercise and a good stress buster. Don’t you feel more tranquil already?”

“Er . . . no, not really.” The chaps play the ecological card and I listen patiently to all the various species that will benefit: the great crested newt, bats, nightingales, various forms of fungi and slow worms. “Okay, I’m all for supporting your local friendly form of fungi, but don’t people need housing more than trees?” I ask.

“Of course people need houses – but they also need somewhere to go when they leave those houses,” says Steve. “They need a free, quiet space that puts them in touch with nature.”

I can accept that. I guess that I take the beauty of trees and the existence of our great woodlands for granted. They have always been a part of the nation’s sense of self and its historical mythology, so we assume they will be there. However, since the 1930s we have lost 50% of our natural ancient woodland – woodland more than 400 years old. Toby tells me: “Our ancient woodland is our very own rainforest – the place where you find the most diverse forms of animal and insect species. ”

When we reach the proposed site I have to eat my words about size not mattering. It’s impressively huge; as-far-as-the-eye-can-see huge. To appreciate what the Trust wants to do, you have to see what was before me: nothing much. All I could see were fields of wheat and fields of oilseed rape that had been harvested, leaving a vast carpet of bamboo-like stubble. It reminded me of something you see in one of those American films of the 1970s such as Badlands; a small prairie of silence and desolation, embroidered by undulating hills.

“Imagine,” says Toby, “where you’re standing now there would be beautiful silver birch trees and butterflies and birds and . . .”

“Owls, mice, spaces for horses and people to roam,” interrupts Steve.

“Okay, I get the picture. What do you want me to do – hug a tree?”

“Yes!” they cry in unison. Toby and Steve are unashamed tree huggers. The term, I learn, is a scientific one that refers to the diameter of the tree at breast height. Everyone I spoke to at the Woodland Trust is proud to be called a tree hugger.

Clive Anderson, the broadcaster and president of the Woodland Trust, says: “Yes I hug trees – but not on the first date.”

And so I give it a go. The use of tree-hugger as a pejorative – and God knows I’m as guilty as anyone – rests on a false conflict between the so-called demands of progress and the needs for conservation.

Or, to put it another way, houses and roads versus trees and voles. Must it be an either or choice? Can’t we recognise the need for both and strike a healthy balance?

To give me a glimpse of that future Toby and Steve took me along to a near-by bit of ancient forest that will be incorporated into the new woodland. They charged around like excited schoolboys, showing off forms of fungi I didn’t know existed.

At one point we all fell silent and eventually I had my magic nature moment. It’s when you feel a sense of inner quiet and all the aches and anxieties of one’s life just slip away. It’s like sliding into God’s own hot tub.

It’s not just the vision of a new forest that is so appealing but the way the trust wants to carry it out. This will truly be the people’s woodland.

For the people will not only be paying for it through donations, but creating it by turning up and digging and planting saplings of about 18ins. This will be the biggest dig for Britain since the second world war.

“Can you imagine this field with over a thousand volunteers, all with shovels and digging and planting these saplings?” says Steve. “We’re going to have a thousand children digging as well,” Toby tells me.

There have been concerns about protecting all those trees from those deadly diseases that have begun to stalk British woodlands. Toby is confident that this won’t be a problem. Not in his woodland. “We will be planting lots of different species of trees over a period of time,” he says, “so we can monitor what is happening. We’ve never had any problems with our other planting projects.”

A project of this size faces all sorts of other problems. The trust has to raise £8.5m in two months, most of it coming from charitable donations. Sunday Times readers will soon be able – for the modest sum of £15 – to plant a tree in a section of the forest that will be known as The Sunday Times Wood (see next week’s issue for more details).

Enjoying a walk in the woodlands is one of the few leisure activities that everyone can enjoy.

Just think about it: a vast, beautiful woodland can be created for your children and grandchildren and their children for £8.5m. That’s less than the price of a Damien Hirst artwork. It will last a lot longer, too.

We need to support this project, if only to make sure there will be trees to hug in the future.

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