Grow Back Greener with The Green Estate

With help from the South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership and the Woodland Trust, local volunteers have been busy over the past few weeks creating new urban woodlands for local people to enjoy.

Staff and volunteers from The Green Estate along with trainees from Grow UK and volunteers from the Friends of Manor Fields Park group have been working hard getting trees planted at two of The Green Estate’s sites in an effort to improve the areas for wildlife and local people.

Thanks to funding from the Woodland Trust’s Grow Back Greener scheme, the Manor Fields and Manor Lodge sites have been a hive of tree planting activity over recent weeks.

The project was initiated by The Green Estate along with the South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership, who helped formulate a design that was sensitive to the existing park setting by including native tree and shrub species that will thrive now and into the future.

Jayne Rotheram, The Green Estate’s Growing Communities Ranger, said:

‘It’s wonderful to be planting another generation of trees at Manor Fields Park. Bob, one of our long-term volunteers, remembers planting several groups when the park was still being created over ten years ago. These are now thriving and over 20ft tall, so it’s great to see some of our younger team members start the cycle all over again. We take pride in caring for them and enjoy watching them grow and change throughout the seasons as they become part of the landscape.’

The project with The Green Estate is one of several schemes that the South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership have helped thanks to the Trees Call to Action Fund. The aim of the scheme is to increase woodland cover across the region, working towards an overall target of 12% cover by 2050.