Press Release
THE CROWN ESTATE JOINS IN RECORD TREE PLANTING ATTEMPT
5 December 2009
Crown Estate properties across Scotland and England today joined in a world record attempt to plant one million trees across the UK in one hour.
Scotland
At The Crown Estate’s Glenlivet estate in Morayshire, volunteers planted 2,250 trees in what will be a new 40 hectare native Caledonian woodland near Altnaglander, which will ultimately have around 63,000 trees planted in total.
At the Applegirth estate in Dumfries and Galloway, local school students and their families helped to plant new trees to replace an avenue of forty-two eighty-year-old horse chestnut trees which died due to disease earlier this year. The avenue is being replanted with two metre tall, pot grown lime trees which are a native species to Scotland.
At the Whitehill estate south of Edinburgh friends and family of The Crown Estate staff planted 1,000 mainly native broadleaved species including oak, ash, rowan and hawthorn, along with some Scots pine, to extend an area of existing native woodland, conforming to The Crown Estate’s long term planting programme for the region.
Dunster and Windsor
At the Dunster estate they exceeded their pledge of 200 trees by 50% – managing to plant 295 in the hour – only stopping because they had run out of trees to plant!
Andy Player, Countryside manager at the Dunster estate, said: “We had an absolutely fantastic turn out from the local community. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves – so much so, that we are considering making a tree-planting event like this an annual fixture in the Dunster forest calendar.”
295 native oak trees (Quercus petraea) were planted by ninety-one volunteers including children from Dunster First School, 1st Dunster Scout Troop, Exmoor National Park Authority, Exmoor Volunteer Conservation Partnership, the Mayor of Minehead and Mosaic, a local youth outreach organisation.
Down on the Surrey / Berkshire borders a small team from the Windsor estate also took part in Tree O’clock, planting 247 trees in the hour.
In all The Crown Estate added more than 3,800 trees to the total of trees planted in the hour as part of the BBC’s Breathing Places campaign. The current record stands 653,143 trees and the Tree O’Clock organisers are hoping to smash the record by planting one million trees.
Commenting on the event Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, said: “This is a great event for communities to take part in. The event is a fantastic way for everyone to have some fun and take part in some physical activity. At the same time, it is also a chance to make the important connection with how our forests and woodlands are helping in the global battle for climate change. Well done to all those involved.”
The event was timed to coincide with National Tree Week (26 November to 7 December 2009) as a celebration of the beginning of the tree planting season, and has been held since 1975.
Further Information
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