Steyning for Trees

We have now managed to plant the Disease Resistant Elm Tree at Abbey Road. This tree was donated to us by The South Downs National Park as part of the programme to repopulate the UK with this iconic tree. 60 million were lost to Dutch Elm disease as we reported in an earlier Newsletter.

The picture shows Simon Zec, Tree Warden (and poet laureate of Steyning), also member of SFT`s committee, planting it at Abbey Road with an assistant on a rather wet day.

We hope to plant another 50 -60 saplings as a small wood on Shona’s and Richard’s land before the end of the planting season. We have plenty of plans to plant more hedgerows and trees (watch this space) next planting season: October/February.

I expect plenty of you heard Margaret Attwood the author (a keen environmentalist) as guest editor of the Today programme on 29th December interviewing Greta Thunberg and Prince Charles. He talked about his concern in the 1960s when so many trees were being cut down and hedges being grubbed out. This all helped to lead to the catastrophic decline in bio-diversity, and carbon and pollution capture, which we are all trying to reverse now.

We are reporting our number of trees planted to the BBC Countryfile programme website to help with their drive to plant more trees throughout the UK. We were invited by the Woodland Trust to a Zoom meeting with CEO Darren Moorcroft.

He talked about their work trying to mitigate the effect of HS2, advising on tunnelling and ways to save as much woodland, including ancient, as possible and also holding them to account.

On a more cheerful note I expect many of you have heard about the Woodland Trust’s project in this area, on the Lost Woods of the Lower Weald and Downs

The aim is to bring back to life 400km2 of woodland, including ancient woodland between Pulborough and Lewes where the tree cover has become fragmented and degraded.

See Action in: Rural Sussex.org.uk/lost woods-environment-programme/

Happy Planting in 2021.