'Tree of Hope will remind us of reasons to live'

The National Trust has created 49 saplings from the Sycamore Gap tree

The Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease will receive a sapling grown from the Sycamore Gap tree as part of the Trees of Hope project.

Following the felling of the famous tree on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland in September 2023 the National Trust has awarded 49 saplings to charities across the UK.

Ian Flatt, who has motor neurone disease (MND), put the application forward for the Leeds centre to receive a tree.

He said there were many connections between the scheme and the work that will be done at the MND Centre.

He said: “With the Burrow family and other patients we’ve created the Walk of Hope, which is hand prints in concrete and I thought wouldn’t it be lovely if we had a Tree of Hope at the end of that.

“But also there’s so many synergies between the message of the tree and the beacon of hope that the MND Centre in Leeds has become for us.

"And, of course, Rob and his family - how much hope they’ve given us.”

Ian Flatt applied for a tree for the Leeds MND centre

Mr Flatt heard about the Trees of Hope project on BBC Breakfast and said he was "absolutely overjoyed" when he heard they had been successful.

He said: “They emailed us and the first line was ‘there’s an embargo on it and you can’t tell anybody’. And I was absolutely bursting. I was so overjoyed.”

He said hope was the spirit of the MND community.

“Hope is every day. Hope can be massive or it can be small things that I hope for.

"We all hope for a cure or at least a treatment for this disease and we all believe we’re getting there and that’s coming closer and closer.

“As Rob once said, it gives us so many reasons to live because we can walk alongside this disease and we can carry on still enjoying our lives and living for hope every day,” he said.

The sapling were given to charities as part of the Trees of Hope project

Leeds Rhinos rugby player Rob Burrow died on 2 June, aged 41, after being diagnosed with MND in December 2019.

Alongside his teammate Kevin Sinfield, he raised more than £15m for MND charities.

The Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease will be based at Seacroft Hospital in Leeds.

On Sunday Sinfield set off on his first fundraising challenge since Burrow’s death, a 230-mile run in seven days.

Mr Flatt said he was looking forward to joining Sinfield on Thursday when he completes a section of the race in Hull.

He said: “What Kev is doing starting this weekend gives us so much hope.

“I wish him all the best with that and I’m looking forward to seeing him on Thursday.”

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.