After the fundraising adventure to Croatia, I’m back in the UK getting everything ready for planting season. Here in Dyrham (near Bristol and Bath), we’re getting our first land-owner planting project ready for the day when 3,000 trees appear. We have yet to get a firm date, for a series of reasons:
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Bare root saplings, the sort generally used in reforestation work, can generally only be planted in the UK between November and March, but with climate change making November so warm, we’re expecting that to be mid-December this year.
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We need an Environmental Impact Assessment done by the Forestry Commission. We were meant to hear back on Nov 17th (we submitted at the end of September) but the chap in charge has unfortunately been hospitalised. We don’t know what, why, or how, and wish him a quick and full recovery. This awful turn of events will also delay approval, which delays delivery, so now we’re thinking January, as pre-Christmas delivery slots with our supplier have all been taken.
Anyway, there’s lots to do while we wait.
The first step is sorting out some previous planting. Saplings were planted near one of our sites in two phases, 3 and 5 years ago, but they have not been monitored by the folks that planted them. You can’t just shove them in the ground and ignore them for five years, which is why Protect Earth will be returning to each site we plant once or twice a year… I’ve been taking down old guards and stakes, propping up ones that have been mislead by fallen guards, and over the next few years we’ll hopefully see more of these small windswept trees growing tall and proud.
After all the planning and emailing, it’s great to be out here getting my hands dirty. I’ll be at this all week, and then I’ll be shoveling horse manure as mulch around their bases to keep the weeds back and help their growth. It’s not all bunnies and rainbows but it’s the work we need to do!
Purchasing Land
The rest of the team has been out visiting plots of land for us to acquire. We looked at 140 acres in Exmoor (£375k), but we lost that due to banks being useless. We looked at some very cheap land in Dumfries, Scotland, at 80 acres for £70k, but it floods regularly. Wet woodlands are a thing, we want to keep risk low on our first purchase.
We have seen some really hopeful plots coming up in Wales. £50k for 44 acres right next to a National Park? 🥰
We’re working as fast as we can to get this land now, as if we are incredibly lucky, we might be able to plant a “small part” of it this year (12 acres / 6,000 trees). Why? This is about to get confusing but I’d like you to know what you’re funding!
To fill you in on timelines:
December - March: Planting season. This is the only time we can realistically plant trees without paying ridiculous amounts for potted trees, and they’re not going to establish as well, so really… bare roots in the winter is how it has to go.
**January - May 15th ** is Grant Application time. That’ll pay us back for trees we plant, stakes and protectors, deer fencing, etc., give us general money for each acre of woodland we plant each year for maintenance.
We’ve been trying to buy since July 2020, but with the banks ignoring us we’ve been unable to buy the plots that were more expensive. We kept thinking we’d be able to get land and use Woodland Trust MOREwoods to help cover 75% of the costs for the trees, saplings, etc, but their deadline was October 9th, so now we’re no land, no grants, no discounts… which seemed like a loss. We were going to just focus on land owner projects this planting season and buy something ASAP to start getting grants in order for next year, but then some of these cheaper ones started showing up… For comparison, when we started this we were looking at £9k an acre, then we were trying to get banks to help us with £2.5k an acre, now we £1.1k an acre…!!
So we can try and buy land in time for May to get the grants, or we can try a little harder and get the land before March so we can get some trees in the ground *this *planting season instead of next. It’s going to be tight, but we never expected this to be easy.
If it works, AMAZING! We lose grants for the areas we plant but the books will still balance when we plant the rest next winter. If we don’t get to plant any trees on our land this winter, we can at least get some deer fencing up and let natural regeneration begin.
If we’re lucky: 6,000 in winter 2020 and 21,000 in winter 2021.
If we’re unlucky: 27,000 trees in winter 2021
The good news is that now we’re more prepared and understand the game better, we can *always *be working on two plots of land. There’s always going to need to be the one we’re planting, and the one we’re getting grants and permissions for ready for next year. If we can get this just right, the potential for scaling this out is bonkers, but the first winter is going to be a bit rushed and bumbly.
So be it!
