Our Story

Trees for Climate is a national woodland creation programme, part of the Government’s £500 million Nature for Climate Fund aiming to treble planting rates in England by the end of the current Parliament (2024)

Cheshire West and Chester Council and The Mersey Forest are playing a leading role as the legal body for the programme, with The Mersey Forest just one of 12 Community Forests across England delivering the programme, transforming landscapes and communities across Merseyside and Cheshire.

Having launched in November 2020, the programme has played a significant role in the Government’s commitment to address climate change and carbon mitigation. The Mersey Forest team work closely with the Council to identify suitable land to plant trees, as part of the drive for carbon neutrality as a borough by 2045.

Our sites will not only help capture the carbon that would have been lost into the atmosphere, but provide a safe haven for local wildlife and give local communities the chance to step out into nature supporting health and wellbeing.

The Challenge

With an ever expanding urban population and more people living and working in cities and town, trees and woods play an increasingly important role in improving our health and wellbeing.

The project serves to demonstrate how multiple services within a council can work together to meet shared outcomes. We worked with archaeologists to determine if the idea fitted with the historic features and landscape character of the area in the Cheshire Plains.

Our initial plans to use the whole space for woodland was modified to preserve an important medieval field system. Thus, instead of planting 12 hectares of woodland, we adapted the design to create an important permanent species rich, traditional, wet meadow grassland to celebrate and protect the medieval features the site presents.

Due to the scale of the project, it took a while to get a grant and the necessary permissions in place. A late planting of trees in March/early April led to lower survival rates than we hoped, and in some cases, needed replacements.

We have a passion about the power of trees and nature and how it can help strengthen not only the environment and climate, but communities and our connection with nature, and it is this mindset that continues to drive us forward in our outline goal of trebling tree planting in five years.

Our Solution

Our sites go beyond just planning trees. Our site in Picton, near Chester, will go a long way in helping the industrial area become the worlds’ first low carbon industrial cluster by 2030, and our site o the North Cheshire Way national footpath provides 70 miles of waymarked walking from Wirral to the Peak District.

This allowed a fantastic opportunity to establish 6 hectares of native broadleaved woodland, with some areas left to celebrate historical features, and other areas habitats for local wildlife. As the woodland continues to thrive it will develop into an increasingly attractive habitat for wildlife, with two newt ponds recently created on the woodland edge to further enhance the habitats.

In total, we’ve been abe to plant 12,366 trees and 305 metres of hedgerows were planted at our Picton site. When fully established, it is estimated that these will store 2,326 tonnes of carbon over 100 years.

The funding we sourced for Picton has allowed us to explore other areas to enhance the area; stiles and a new footbridge installed along the national footpath help make the woodland more accessible. We’ve also sown six hectares of species rich native wildflower meadows to recreate the traditional floodplain meadows that would have once existed across the wetter part of the site, compensating for habitat loss in other parts of the borough.

These improvements will not only help capture the carbon and provide a haven for local wildlife, it also allows communities to step out into nature, supporting their physical and mental wellbeing.

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