[1] Around 1920 a young miner and keen amateur gardener, Vic Stead, resided in Garforth.

[2][1][3] He regularly made the trip to Aberford by foot along the "Fly-line", a disused colliery railway, to see his girlfriend Nellie who worked there as a dairy maid.

[4][5][6][7] Near to Aberford Stead found three beech saplings growing in a row and grafted the central tree onto the two adjacent ones in a diagonal fashion to form the shape of the capital letter "N".

[1] Writer Richard Mabey has described it as "one of the most touching twentieth-century landmark trees" in his 1996 work Flora Britannica and The Woodland Trust have called it a "northern gem".

[4][8] Nellie's Tree has become the symbol of the Save Parlington Action Group, a local campaign against development of the woodland.