By The Woodland Trust
Whether planting for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, to help tackle climate change, or to improve local areas around the country, the Woodland Trust’s popu-lar free tree pack scheme is now open for applications.
Schools and community groups across the South East are now able to apply for the first 1 million trees, and into 2022 there are over 3 million trees in total avail-able via free tree packs.
Packs are sent out twice a year with November packs now available for order. In spring the take up in Surrey was high with 8580 trees delivered to 99 schools and community groups across the county.
The Woodland Trust is a leading delivery partner of The Queen’s Green Canopy (QGC) and is supporting many thousands of schools and communities to plant trees to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022.
Applications are accepted on a first come, first served basis and the first million trees will be despatched in November during the planting season. The Trust welcomes applica-tions from all types of community.
The packs are available in a range of themes; year-long colour, a wild harvest, or a haven for wildlife. Another contains hardy species which tolerate exposed sites and dry areas or where water collects easily, there is even a working wood mix which could provide wood fuel or willow for weaving.
The packs also come in a range of sizes; 15 (perfect for urban areas and which can be split between neighbours where necessary), 30 (which will create a six-metre hedgerow or a tennis court-sized copse), 105 (enough to cov-er an area as big as four tennis courts) or 420 (to cover an area the size of a football pitch) and most can create fantastic hedge-rows. Packs contain a mix of UK sourced and grown na-tive broadleaf species such as hazel, rowan, hawthorn, common oak, silver birch, wild cherry, elder, dogwood and holly.
Since 2004 the scheme has helped thousands of groups plant millions of trees and there is support for experi-enced and first- time tree planters! In Spring this year over 400,000 free trees were sent to keen planters across the country.
Senior project lead for the Woodland Trust Vicki Baddeley said:
“We’re always amazed by the appetite schools and communities have for tree plant-ing. It is such a wonderful thing to do. It is a positive, life-affirming and life-changing action that people can take to mark momen-tous occasions like The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, to help tackle the climate and nature crises, or to make their local areas a bit green-er. We find that once people have planted one tree, they usually want to do more.
To order free trees people can go to: www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/freetrees before August 25 and they’ll be delivered in November 2021.
All trees are UK and Ireland Sourced-and-Grown (UKISG). Responsible tree procure-ment is central to developing resilient wood-lands.