Our Story

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

The Mersey Forest is one of 12 Community Forests across England delivering the programme, transforming landscapes and communities across Merseyside and Cheshire.

Launched in November 2020, the programme is significant in the Government’s commitment to address climate change and carbon mitigation. Across Cheshire and Merseyside, nearly 44 hectares of new woodland has been created in the last year, in urban parks and green spaces and on private land and farmland.

In the Wirral, The Mersey Forest team works closely with Wirral Council to identify suitable land to plant trees, as part of the Council’s Tree, Hedgerow and Woodland Strategy which aims to double Wirral’s tree canopy over the next ten years by planting 210,000 trees.

The Challenge

We found that maximising the collaboration between the local council, communities, and organisations like The Mersey Forest was critical to the project’s success, as we were able establish good relationships with key stakeholders and gave us good advice and extra pairs of hands when needed. Early engagement with the landowner ensures a lengthy timeline to identify the best possible site.

The advice we got from the Community Forest helped us in being able to deliver the project on time, and with actively involving local communities in the delivery of the planting encourages a sense of place and ownership for those involved.

However there’s always room to improve; for our future Trees for Climate schemes in Wirral, we will be increasing our public consultation to ensure that more of our communities understand the purpose of the planting and have an opportunity to take part. We will also be delivering the planting without the use of plastics and application of herbicides to help address the climate and environmental emergency which has been declared in Wirral.

Our Solution

Leasowe Loop, a former horse grazing site, was a location selected by the council, with under a hectare of land prepared and planted. A mixture of coniferous, shrub and native softwood trees were planted using funding provided through the Trees for Climate programme.

The project’s success is measured on the amount of carbon it is predicted to sequester over its lifetime as it converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass.

Larger sites are also registered and validated through the government recognised Woodland Carbon Code, this ensures that the amount of carbon estimated to be stored is verified to international standards for carbon sequestration projects. For the Leasowe site, which is used in this example, the trees planted will store approximately 291 tonnes of carbon dioxide over 100 years.

The community have also been instrumental to the success of this project and over 80 volunteer days were organised over a five-month period by the Wallasey Tree Planting Group, ensuring the trees were protected, mulched and weeded. Training and support have been provided by The Mersey Forest Team for these sessions.

Besides the obvious benefits of improving air quality and reducing noise pollution, the trees will be a valuable carbon store and provide a haven for biodiversity – addressing Wirral’s Climate Emergency challenge.

The site has had many challenges with weeds around the saplings growing at a phenomenal rate during the warm and wet spring/summer. A team of volunteers has turned up most weekends to help tackle these with training support and tools provided by The Mersey Forest Team. The group intends to take the planting challenge to new sites in the coming years using trees they are growing at their nearby nursery site.

In total over 4,300 trees were planted on this site. When fully established, it is estimated that these will store an estimated 291 tonnes of carbon over 100 years.

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