Shrewsbury Town Council has teamed up with Shropshire Council to create a Community Tree Nursery project to ensure that a ready supply of trees is available for the county.
With £500,000 of funding secured by Shropshire Council from the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the two Councils are working togethe
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provide a community tree project under the Trees Outside Woodlands scheme.
The aim of the scheme is to try different approaches to encourage planting trees in locations that would not normally be considered woodland, which can include hedgerow trees, urban trees and small clusters of trees within fields.
Helen Ball, Town Clerk, said: “Whilst there is a desire to plant more trees to help the environment by reducing our carbon footprint and encouraging wildlife, it is often difficult to find suitable locations where the trees can be planted.
“We have been in discussions with Shropshire Council’s Tree and Biodiversity Teams on how we can work together to ensure that the whole county can benefit from the Trees Outside Woodlands project and supply the quantity of trees needed to meet both Councils’ targets for tree planting schemes.
“The Town Council has its own tree nursery at our greenhouse which we use for some of our tree planting needs. Our staff have already taken over 20,000 shrub and tree cuttings last year and have grown them on to a size where they are big enough to be planted out. By expanding our existing tree nursery facilities at our greenhouse, we will be able to develop a Community Tree Nursery to benefit both Shrewsbury and Shropshire.
“By using our own local tree stock, we’re able to reduce the risk of introducing tree infections to the county as well as reducing our transportation miles.”
Shropshire Council has agreed to provide the necessary improvements to the existing infrastructure to accommodate the increase in tree whip capacity from part of the funding from Defra with the aim of creating a tree nursery to meet future requirements.
The Trees Outside Woodlands project will run until March 2023 with the findings helping to develop more effective programmes of funding for tree planting in the future.
The Town Council declared a climate emergency in 2019 and made a commitment to ensure its activities and operations are carbon neutral by 2030.
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Press Release issued: 31 March 2021