New Milestone Reached: 2,000 Trees Planted
Back in December our tree counter was on 92 trees and two months later we’re up to 2,000 trees. 1900 of those were planted in a single weekend! Let’s have a look at some of those photographs and talk about what’s coming next here at Protect Earth as we continue our mission to plant as many of the right trees in the right places as we possibly can.
Pantpurlais, Llandrindod Wells
We mentioned last week the plan to plant 500 trees on a farm called Pantpurlais near Llandrindod Wells, Wales, and we’re happy to let you know it went swimmingly!
Here you can see a bunch of Field Maple, Alder, Silver Birch, and in the background some Pine and Oak.
It was incredibly impressive how quickly the first 400 trees were planted: one day! Another 75 trees and shrubs were planted on the second day (25 short of the 500 but that’s what was delivered!)
Our first 100 trees took us a week, even with a bunch of volunteers, but that was mostly due to us placing oaks strategically around the farm in places the cows wouldn’t smash them. When you’ve got one big field to plant, and the stakes/canes have been placed already, it’s really easy for 5-6 volunteers to smash out a few hundred trees in a day.
Here’s a look at the same field before the trees went in. Much better now I think.
The same field from a slightly different angle (sorry!) before the saplings went in, and before it snowed.
The success of this project in mostly due to the hard work and diligence of land owners: Darren and Claire, and their committed friends and neighbors, turning up despite the awful weather, two days in a row! We didn’t get a chance to bring any volunteers due to the COVID-19 restrictions, but this farm will be planting many more trees with us in the future, so you will hopefully have a chance to see this beautiful part of the world if you sign up for the mailing list.
We also need to thank the other organizations involved: advice and paperwork from Coed Cymru, discount saplings from Woodland Trust, and funding from Ecologi.
Donkeywell Farm, Cirencester
Whilst some of our team were cycling to and from the Welsh mountains to keep the carbon footprint of this charity to a minimum, another crew of tree planters were getting 1,440 trees planted in Donkeywell Farm. We’ve not mentioned this one yet, but the plan came together at a rate of knots.
This was a really interesting project, and the first “Optimum Shelterbelt” we’ve planted. A shelterbelt is generally a row of trees or thick hedgerows along the edge of a field designed to stop strong winds battering crops and livestock. An “Optimum Shelterbelt” is a term we learned from FWAG South West who set this project up, and comes out of research from Oxford University. The basic idea is using a combination of trees and shrubs planted in a tight and specific formation, to not only reduce wind, but provide nature corridors, improve biodiversity, and in general improve yields from the fields they’re protecting.
We could bang on a whole lot more about shelterbelts, and at some point we will, but for now take a look at the efforts of these tough volunteers planting 1,440 on a very cold day!
One of the two shelterbelts installed on this farm to improve productivity of the crops in the fields, and reduce soil erosion!
We’ll be writing up more about Donkeywell Farm shortly, we’ve been a bit overwhelmed getting all of our trees entered into our database so that Eoclogi subscribers can see a tree of each of their saplings. Łukasz Mróz is hard at work making an iOS app which will help us get this done “in the field” in the future, but for now it’s a lot of manual data entry!
If you like what you’re seeing here please set up a monthly donation so that we can get closer to our goal of buying our own land, that we can plant, protect, and open to the public to enjoy!