Free Community Tree Scheme opens for coming planting season
Landowners are being encouraged to sign up for Shropshire Council’s free Community Tree Scheme which is launching today, ahead of the 2022/23 planting season.
Shropshire Council secured funding worth £500,000 as part of a joint project led by the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Tree Council called “Trees Outside Woodland” in 2020, and is one of five councils involved in the project, which will run until March 2023.
This year Shropshire Council is supplying 21,000 transplant trees and hedgerow stock, in groups of 20 mixed species designed to meet a range of different planting conditions.
Community Tree Scheme 2022 infographic
Ian Nellins, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for climate change, natural assets and the green economy, said:-
“Shropshire Council is committed to planting 345,000 trees by 2050, though we are hoping to bring the target forward.
“This scheme supports that effort, and we’re focusing on planting groups of native trees and shrubs as copses and small areas of woodland, to maximise the benefits for landscape and wildlife around the county.
“At its launch in 2020 it took just nine hours before all 12,500 trees were allocated. This year there will be 21,000 trees available for the planting season 2022/23.”
The planted trees and hedges will ‘lock up’ carbon and provide other environmental benefits as they grow and mature, contributing in their own small way towards our ambition of making Shropshire net zero carbon by 2030.
The trees have been grouped to meet the needs of the three broad types of planting situations commonly encountered around the county. They are: woodland for general ‘lowland’ planting sites, woodland for ‘upland’/exposed sites, and woodland for damp/poorly drained sites.
There is also a native hedgerow mix which can be used to to ‘gap up’ existing hedgerows or to create short lengths of new ones.
More information about the scheme can be found here or email tree.scheme@shropshire.gov.uk
