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Taking root Volunteers help plant new forest in Somerset
The Guardian
|January 06, 2025
On a chilly day recently under stubborn grey skies, a band of green-fingered volunteers can be found in Somerset's Chew valley with spades in their hands and dirt under their fingernails.
About 30 helpers are split into pairs, carefully planting hawthorn, blackthorn and crab apple saplings, one tree at a time, undaunted by the scale of the project: they are creating one of the biggest new woodlands in England.
The Lower Chew Forest, as it will be known, is a vast new woodland between Bristol and Bath made up of 100,000 native trees planted by about 1,000 volunteers mobilised by Avon Needs Trees.
The charity says the 170-hectare (420-acre) woodland will increase biodiversity, reduce flooding and lock up carbon to help prevent climate breakdown. But what does it take to make it happen?
This story is from the January 06, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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