Cheshire Wildlife Trust and Congleton Partnership have secured a grant of £63,000 to help plant 30,000 trees around the town and surrounding parishes.

After a successful planting season in early 2020, which saw over 1,300 trees planted in and around the town, the project has proven a hit with local residents and the Northern Forest Partnership Innovation Fund.

The Northern Forest is an ambitious £500 million project to plant 50 million trees in 25 years in a corridor stretching from Liverpool to Hull.

It's a partnership between the UK's largest woodland charity the Woodland Trust and four Community Forests that form part of the Community Forest Trust - Manchester's City of Trees, the Mersey Forest, HEYwoods in East Yorkshire and the White Rose Forest in North and West Yorkshire.

Since its launch two years ago more than two million trees have gone in the ground.

With the support of Defra, the Woodland Trust is managing a £2.1m Partnership Innovation Fund to grow new woodlands of three hectares or more across the Northern Forest by planting a million trees by March 2022.

It offers matched funding for large scale projects delivered through innovative models and mechanisms. The concept of inspiring and empowering residents to act locally and play their part in tackling a global problem really appealed to the funder.

Cheshire Wildlife Trust will be leading on delivering the project, bringing their expert knowledge in wildlife-rich habitat creation to the table.

Adam Linnet, Wild Communities Officer for Cheshire Wildlife Trust, said: "It is fantastic to have secured this grant so we can accelerate our delivery of this project in Congleton. We want to help local residents to be empowered, to take action and do something to help the environment and wildlife, all in one go.

"Through tree planting, not only are they helping to capture carbon, but they are also creating future homes for species such as purple hairstreak butterflies, tawny owls and countless numbers of insects.

"As Cheshire is one of the least wooded counties in the UK (7% tree cover compared to an average of 10% in England, 13% for the UK as a whole), we are missing vital habitat for all kinds of wildlife.

"We will now be able to work with Congleton residents to start to address this in a meaningful way."

The project isn't all about new spaces for wildlife, it also seeks to start the conversation around the need to tackle climate breakdown.

Whilst tree planting is a good way of capturing carbon, it is vital we reduce the amount of carbon we continue to produce.

The hope is this project gives people the tools they need to further reduce their carbon footprint, which is where Congleton Sustainability Group come to the fore.

Peter Aston from Congleton Sustainability Group said: "We want people to use the simple act of planting a tree as a catalyst for inspiring further actions to reduce our individual and collective carbon footprints.

"We believe that in years to come the trees that we are planting now will have grown to become important visible testimonies to the efforts that this generation has made to look after our planet."

The project is now looking for spaces to plant trees in and around Congleton.

Whilst some of this planting will take in local greenspaces, the total area needed is over thirty football pitches in size.

This will mean planting will have to also take place in the wider landscape. It is hoped that local landowners come forward and suggest spaces on their landholding to be planted up.

Mr Linnet added: "There is a real chance here for local landowners to be a climate and wildlife hero. To give their own land over to something that will help future generations of wildlife and people alike.

"We can help them to plan and plant their new woodland, we just need them to come forward. We will also need a small army of volunteers to get all of those trees in the ground. So we will be running volunteer days in the future so folk can come out and make it all happen."

If you are interested in planting up your own woodland, or you'd like to know about future volunteer days, please get in touch with [email protected].