National Trust urges us all to plant trees for the environment
The conservation charity says now is the best time to get planting
The National Trust is urging us all to plant trees for the environment, saying now is the best time to do so.
The conservation charity says recent polling shows half of people (49%) would consider planting a tree for the environment, and one in six (16%) have already done so.
However only 7% of the more than 2,200 people polled by YouGov knew winter was the best time to plant trees.
Thomas Hill is the Trees and Woodland Advisor for the trust in the South East. He said: "It's obviously outside of that main growing time of year for our trees. So that will allow them the time and place to establish their root systems which will hopefully serve them well for centuries to come.
"Trees offer a part solution, or perhaps at best they buy us a bit more time to make those wider, bigger decisions at a country or global level that will allow us to live sustainably".
It all forms part of work being done by the trust, to plant over 600,000 tress this winter alone.
Thomas continued: "In the South East where I work there's 100,000 of those trees going in. They'll basically get us going towards that target, which for the National Trust is planting or establishing 20 million trees by 2030".
While the trust is asking us all to do our bit and plant a tree, Thomas explains sometimes it is best for them to cut down trees.
He said: "Of course in terms of net value we absolutely need more trees, btu in some specific areas we do ocasionaly need to remove them.
"A lot of our ancient woodlands evolved with humans managing those when we depended on wood as a daily resource for food for building houses and those woodlands were managed everyday. What that did was that it allowed light in and actually this mimics the natural processes.
"Woodlands without humans around would have herbivores going in there eating up certain areas, bashing down trees. Trees would fall down in storms and you get these little pockets of open areas and within those, some really rare species, grey woodland dependent flora, specific butterflies, birds, et cetera, would live on those. And actually, if we allow our woods to remain completely unmanaged, we will no longer have those open areas. "