It’s been a busy and varied tree planting season at Moor Trees. We’d like to thank everyone who supported our work over the winter months — from the landowners we collaborated with, to the dedicated volunteers in our nurseries and out on planting days.
Special thanks also go to our woodland creation team. Thank you Jess and Graham for your advice and support in ensuring all our plans were in place, Dave and Holly for preparing thousands of trees from the nursery and Gabriele and Jack who joined us again this year to lead our planting days. Together, they helped lead and supervise a range of our volunteer days including corporate Wild Work Days across Dartmoor and the surrounding area.
Highlights from the season included:
- Creating a large new area of woodland, planting nearly 6,000 trees over five acres in Bickington, just outside the National Park with thanks to funding for the landowner from Plymouth and South Devon Community Forest.
- Collaborating with Challacombe Farm for some river valley restoration, planting up the banks of the River Webburn with a mix of willow cuttings, farm-grown trees and our locally grown trees laid out in small clusters or “tree islands”.
- An inspiring new scheme to boost habitats and nature at Scae Farm where we also celebrated planting our 200,000th tree while planting nearly 2,000 trees in copses and woodland fringe planting.
- Across the Duchy estate at Prince Hall and Moorlands Farm we worked with the Duchy of Cornwall to plant nearly 1,000 trees in five woodland compartments around the site. Plus, at Greyhound Newtake, a brave group of volunteers planted 350 trees in the wilds of the central moor close to Cherry Brook.
- We also ventured to the National Nature Reserve of Wistman’s Wood with Natural England and the Woodland Trust to plant 800 more Wistman’s provenance trees grown in our tree nurseries. This included clusters of trees in each of the six new exclusion plots and filling in more of the Wistman’s Wood mirror site (where planting commenced last March) in support of the Duchy’s vision.
- To conclude the season we spent a few days, including a very busy Saturday with the 1st Plympton Scouts who helped us and the local community to finish planting nearly 3,000 trees into 500 metres of hedgerow at Jubilee Field in Princetown.
In addition to these important new woodlands and habitats on Dartmoor, more of our trees left our nurseries to continue habitat restoration on the Sharpham estate and the creation of a new temperate rainforest at Devon Wildlife Trust’s Bowden Pillars on the edge of Totnes. Volunteers also revisited sites we planted two winters ago to replace a few trees that did not survive into their second year at Colly Park, Old Langworthy and a site at Staverton. An important part of woodland management and support to aid effective and resilient establishment of new woodlands.
Thank you also to the Utility Warehouse Foundation for funding our tree planting aspirations as part of our three year partnership and the corporate groups who joined in to support our tree planting goals this season. To find out more about the woodlands we have helped to create or interested in establishing or expanding woodland on your land then please get in touch.
Image by Josh Greet.
