I'm in a group that bought 30 odd acres of ex Forestry Commission clear-felled plot on the Welsh / Shropshire Border when they were selling chunks off in the 1990s.
Crowd funded by donation / subscription and balancing the books after planting grants, also registered as an educational charitable trust. We now have two other plots and all three locations have different types of woodland, landscape and interest and degrees of tree maturity and diversity.
The downside of doing things by committee is the potential to loose a year in indecision and minor personality differences for something that the group i a custodian for in a relatively short timespan compared to life in the woods themselves.
