Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum

Quest complete!


Westonbirt’s mission is ‘to connect people with trees; to improve quality of life’, and we like to try different ways of doing this!

In August 2015, Westonbirt launched the TreeQuests mobile app as part of The Westonbirt Project. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (as it was then known), the app was a trial into how a new piece of digital interpretation could work at the arboretum.

The app has had a successful run, with over 4000 users, an incredible achievement given the challenges of installing digital interpretation into an outdoor, botanic setting.

We are very proud of how it was developed: we could have simply put a map of the arboretum on an app, which would have been easy to do! However we like to push ourselves, and through consultation with the Westonbirt Youth Forum and onsite visitor surveys feedback we created a quest to challenge users to discover trees across the arboretum.

Thank you all for your support in either downloading the app, offering feedback, or to those who trialled prototypes back in 2015! However, after five years, we feel the time is right to try new things, and develop other interpretation across the site to help us achieve our mission.

From the 21st August, the app will be ‘switched off’, so we can refocus our resources. Watch this space for any exciting new developments!

What if I have the app installed on my phone?

The app won’t disappear; you’d have to delete it for that! All the information you unlocked from any challenges or discoveries will stay on the app, but the app will no longer be supported. So if for any reason the app decides to crash, we will no longer be able to help with this issue.

As new software is released for your device, the app will become less and less useable as we will not be updating it to work with future software.

Will I be able to download the app after the 21st August?

No, we will be taking it off the App Store and Play Store, and you will no longer be able to download it at the Welcome Building.

Will the labels stay on the app trees?

No, the labels will be removed on the 22nd of August.

TreeQuests app was discontinued on the 21st August 2019

Thank you again for your support!

If you have any ideas about activities you'd like to see at Westonbirt email us at marketing@fowa.org.uk


Look out for our next blog on wildflowers coming this Friday.