Six residents of Hanley Castle parish have received advice about planting the right tree in the right place and also grant aid to boost biodiversity on their land, restoring and creating almost 400m of hedgerow, planting up 2 small orchards and creating a small woodland.
Charlotte Vincent of Severn Treescapes, a project funded by the Trees Call to Action Fund (TCAF) and hosted by Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire Wildlife Trusts, aiming to advise, assist and encourage farmers and landowners to plant more trees, co-ordinated the plan.
The idea began after a talk from Charlotte and colleague at Castlemorton village hall in January where information on the project, a myriad of funding schemes and examples of successful projects was shared.
Discussion within the Hanley Carbon and Hanley Castle Environment Groups identified a few farmers and landowners where it seemed biodiversity enhancements could be made. Members of The Hanley Environment Group acted as go-between and things began to snowball. Within a short period of time 7 mini projects had come to light.
At the same time Severn Trent launched the 2024 round of their £200k Boost for Biodiversity Grant (B4B) where applications are invited for collaborative environmental improvements. It had a characteristic short application window – 4 weeks from launch to close.
The Hanley Castle parish suite of projects fitted the brief of both the Treescapes project, increasing tree cover across the landscape, and the B4B, providing biodiversity improvements across 2 or more land-holdings within a defined area, in our case the Hanley Castle parish boundary.
Charlotte drafted the required 5 year management plan needed to inform the works and establish costs for the projects, and designed the words needed to state the case for grant aid.
And…. We were successful! A total grant amount of £3895 has been offered. The summer will be spent ordering trees and hedge plants, and guarding materials, and then onto planting in the winter.
Local community volunteering days (where cake and tea will definitely be on the menu) will be advertised, so keep a look out so that you can help plant some the trees and hedges and do your bit to boost biodiversity, capture carbon and increase climate resilience!
If you own some land and are interested in planting trees, be it hedges, field corners, woodlands, orchards, wood-pasture or field trees, do get in touch with one of the Severn Treescapes team.
Your county contacts are:
Herefordshire Wildlife Trust - Charlotte Bell c.bell@herefordshirewt.co.uk
Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust - Laurence.richards@gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk,
Worcestershire Wildlife Trust - Simone Mansi Simone@worcestershirewildlifetrust.org
Charlotte Vincent
Severn Treescapes Trees and Woodland Adviser
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