Patsy (Patience) Wood has died following a four-month battle with an aggressive cancer.

Although aged only 47 at the time of her death, she had already made her mark in the important field of environmental awareness.

About 12 years ago, following a masters degree in Environmental Impact Assessment at Oxford Brookes University, she started discussions with Anne Miller at the university on what to do next.

Subsequent talks with the Environment Agency identified a gap in information and advice for smaller companies.

They needed more help to tackle the problems and costs of waste, energy, water usage, and environmental regulations.

From these discussions came the Environmental Information Exchange (EiE), which Patsy established at the university.

At first, she offered training to people from smaller organisations, mostly by getting in outside experts.

EiE has won two OSCAs (Oxfordshire Sustainability and Conservation Award), in 2001 and 2004.

In 2006, EiE gave a successful showcase of some of the many and varied organisations they had helped, including St Birinus School in Didcot.

Ms Wood was born in Oxford in 1960 and was educated at the Dragon School and Oxford High School.

She then read Agriculture at St Anne's College, Oxford, followed by a Masters degree in Forestry.

Her first job was for Buckinghamshire County Council, clearing up and planning new planting after the 1987 hurricane.

This was followed by a couple of years drawing up management plans for the National Trust woodlands in the region.

She was a surreptitious tree planter - if she found a neglected corner around Oxford which she felt needed a tree, she would just plant one, sometimes at night, and make sure it survived.

At her funeral, which was attended by 400 people, her brother Jonathan, who had obtained 400 small Aspen trees, asked everyone there to take one away and plant it somewhere in her memory.

She and her long-term partner, Colin Hughes, were happy gardeners and prolific allotment keepers.

Ms Wood was also a prolific traveller, trekking in the Alps, the Atlas Mountains, Alaska, Peru, Tibet, Costa Rica, Nepal, Vietnam, Sweden, Colombia, Dominican Republic and the Amazon Basin.