Earlier this month the Community Forest team headed to Whitehaven for a planting day at Hensingham. Together with the local school, residents and volunteers, hundreds of trees were planted at Rosebank Recreation Ground. The event, hosted by Copeland Borough Council, brought together pupils from Hensingham Primary School, local councillors, the local community and partners in the planting of 383 trees, around 0.7 hectares.
This site is a great example of how Community Forest funding can be used on a small scale to create benefits for people and nature. Woodland creation is not simply about creating large forests and even modest-sized areas of land can yield great results. The planting contributes to the landscape, adding more diverse habitat around the edges whilst leaving the open grass areas free and adding individual trees where appropriate.
The key opportunities here are the proximity of local people, we've got a primary school, allotments and residents who are interested in how we can make a more diverse and engaging green space for the benefit of the environment and also people. The greatest opportunity with the Community Forest is that as well creating diverse habitats we can fund peoples engagement with that, whether that is footpaths, forests schools or community planting days we can create that direct connection with nature
Gary Waters (Cumbria Woodlands)
The really important thing is we are next to primary school and it's nice to get young people involved in nature. We did some planting last year but we wanted to enhance the area further... They walk to school through here every day they see them grow and start looking after the environment in the long term...
Emanuel Flecken (Open Spaces Manager Copeland Council)
Funding is available for projects like this through the Community Forest, providing a way to enhance spaces for people and nature. The Community Forest can support you through the process and the flexibility of the scheme means plans can be creative and can fund a range of planting and commuity projects.
We've been trying to evolve our green open space to be more attractive places for people to come and increase the quality... the only way to do this is with external funding, when this opportunity came up, we filled in the forms, giving an idea of what we wanted to do and it was sent to the board where they said it was a fantastic idea...
Emanuel Flecken (Open Spaces Manager Copeland Council)
Want to get involved?
If you own or manage land that could be used for a project like this, please get in touch at info@cumbriawoodlands.co.uk. Or use our contact form HERE