Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of the controversial Prince Andrew, spoke out this week to ask the public to help her save a place that is very close to her heart.

Yahoo News reported that Ferguson, 61, only recently learned that the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council has approved a warehouse to be built at Oakdown Farm in Dummer. This project will require the chopping down of oak trees that line the road into the village where Ferguson lived as a child, and these trees are especially meaningful to her.

“My father taught me to love everything about the incredible world of nature, and particularly instilled a sense of awe at the magnificence and importance of trees in the landscape,” Ferguson said. “I remember loving the oak trees in and around Dummer, where I grew up, including those that form an avenue on an old road into the village. These trees actually inspired one of my children’s books, ‘The Enchanted Oak Tree,’ which is designed to pass on the magic of trees to the next generation.”

The news came as a shock to Ferguson, who is now livid about what is happening.

“I was at first heartbroken and then deeply angry to hear about plans to cut down the woodland corridor of 67 mature oaks in Dummer, to make way for an enormous warehouse,” she said. “One oak tree is home to up to 2,300 species of wildlife and we simply can’t afford to keep losing trees from an already fragmented landscape. I’m urging people to sign a petition against these plans, which must be brought to a halt before it’s too late.”

Ferguson was married to Andrew from 1986 until 1996, and she is the mother of his two daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. In a newly-surfaced interview from 1996, Ferguson told Oprah Winfrey that life as a royal is “not a fairy tale.”

“You didn’t marry the fairy tale, you married a man,” she said. “You fell in love and married a man, and then you have to come to terms with the fairy tale. Now it’s not a fairy tale, it’s real life.”

Ferguson went on to talk about the many rules in Buckingham Palace, including one that made it so that she couldn’t even open a window if she wanted to.

“The palace from when you look at it from the outside, the windows have to be open in only a certain amount so they are all in line, and I’d come in and throw open all the windows,” she said. “And no, that was wrong.”