4 hours Ago
More than 50,000 trees have been planted across Swindon over the last five years. The tree planting is part of a project between Swindon Borough Council and the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and there are thousands more ready to be planted this year and next. The two organisations collaborate on the Great Western Community Forest and Swindon Forest Meadows schemes, and five years ago launched a new project with those schemes called Trees for Climate.
Neil Pullen, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's conservation officer, said: “The tree canopy in the borough has increased from eight per cent to 13 per cent, and when we started the project the target was to plant 200 hectares of trees and we’ve actually planted 230 hectares.” The project has also used some unused allotments, near to the river and therefore prone to flooding, to create a forest garden and a tree nursery. Neil showed the Local Democracy Reporter, the cabinet member for placemaking and planning Councillor Marina Strinkovsky and leader of the Conservative group Councillor Gary Sumner, - part of the cabinet which approved support for the project five years ago - around the nursery where dozens of saplings and hundreds of seedlings are thriving.
Mr Pullen said: “We have taken seeds from native trees from all around Swindon, and we are very careful to make sure we label them so we know where they come from in case there’s any disease that we find. “There are great ‘cultural’ trees in Swindon which we’d like to take seeds from the mulberry at the Richard Jefferies Museum, for example, or the great willow in Wroughton. There’s an amazing oak tree in Cranmore Avenue.
“If we could use the seeds from those trees here, we’d be preserving the cultural legacy as well as the genetic one.” At a recent council meeting, Cllr Strinkovsky praised the success of the projects under the Forest Meadows scheme and gave due credit to the previous administration for its backing. Swindon confirm changes to the County Ground ahead of next season Malmesbury announces six-week festival celebrating business in the town She said: “For those of us who came to Swindon later, it’s not always obvious how green it is – it took me years to find places like Town Gardens or the Polo Grounds.
There are amazing plants there, but they’re hidden behind the houses and down an alleyway. But Swindon is very green. Cllr Sumner agreed:” I have sometimes been flown over the town, and it’s amazing how much green it is up there.
“Administrations and councillors from all parties care about Swindon and supporting projects like this is all about making it a better place.” Several other projects have regular working parties under the Swindon Meadow Forest umbrella. Mr Pullen said: “We had volunteers out last night counting Great Crested Newts in sites in North Swindon, there’s tree planting at sites all across the borough and work clearing flood meadows.
” He showed the councillors the results of some painstaking work by volunteers to help the seeds of Spindle and barberry trees to germinate and grow: “The spindles were collected last year and volunteers stripped them of a protective coating which prevents germination and they’re now ready for pricking out. “By the end of the year, they’ll be about a foot tall and ready for planting. “Barberry trees host a wheat rust, so they were ripped out wherever wheat was grown, but they also host the barberry carpet moth, and we’ll be looking to plant them out when they’re ready.
“We have an amazing history and culture of trees and nature here in Swindon and we should shout about it and celebrate it.” More information about all the work parties and projects is available by emailing [email protected] .
.
