The woodpeckers were drumming, the birds were singing and the volunteers were planting.
This was the sound in Husbands Bosworth on a Friday and Sunday morning.
An army of 60 wonderful volunteers of all ages helped plant about 4500 trees whips covering the majority of a 1.2km long hedge. This is a fruit and nut long forest for wildlife at the Gliding Centre Husbands Bosworth. The fruit species for wildlife include hawthorn, sloe, hazel, dog rose. Each metre of this hedge will hold and slowly release about 1 tonne of water during a deluge, adsorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen while providing a great habitat and food source for wildlife.
These hedgerows will provide a much needed habitat for animals such as birds, hedgehogs, dormice and bats to help them thrive in the area.
Volunteers, including three Tree Wardens, came from local communities as well as Leicester, Broughton Astley and Fleckney and included Councillors Phil King, Peter James and Dominic Fosker. Harborough Woodland are very grateful to the Gliding Centre for their leadership and HDC for the introduction to this opportunity.
A massive thank you goes to Adam Goodall, Principle Tree and Woodland Manager LCC, for the excellent support on multiple projects and for the free supply of hedge whips and material without which this important hedge would be much more difficult to implement. These 6000 whips help LCC to achieve their 700,000 new tree target, reduce the environmental impact of ash dieback tree loss and will create more opportunities South Leicestershire with its second lowest woodland cover in the UK.
This project, along with our multiple school projects, will help build trust and will hopefully lead to more tree planting and natural flood management (NFM) opportunities near the Gliding Centre to slow the flow in a similar way to the large Smeeton Westerby NFM scheme that our group initiated. We need hundreds of NFM schemes in the upper Welland catchment, with their careful use of vast quantities of trees and landscaping to reduce our flood risk which is already increasing with global warming.
If you would like to help with completing this long forest or want to know about the Tree Warden scheme please see
https://harboroughwoodland.com/ and email info@harboroughwoodland.com
Gliding Centre info www.theglidingcentre.co.uk
