Chris - planting trees and rewilding

I am Chris and I am a member of the Herefordshire County Climate Challenge team. I live on a small eco-holding of approximately five acres which I have been gradually rewilding and planting with new trees and hedges for 25 years. Even during a Covid lockdown planting trees is something we can all safely do, along with encouraging rewilding of saplings by not weeding them out but instead by marking them and then transplanting them to better positions, if needed, the following winter.

Photo above is of Chris planting a screening, evergreen, specimen conifer, which will bear unusual red cones, along with Finn, the son of another member of the Challenge team who found doing something positive and very therapeutic after having been upset by David Attenborough's hard-hitting climate-change documentary A Life on Our Planet.

Only the lemon-scented conifer on the left was planted while the tall crack willows, sallys and hazels in the background spontaneously grew on damp ground and are all absorbing carbon dioxide and water. All the trees now absorb and store a significant amount of carbon each year and are helping to prevent flash flooding from the extreme weather events which are now more frequently happening in Herefordshire due to climate change.

I am grateful to Brian Matthews who has expertly facilitated the group and encouraged us to share our own journeys in improving the biodiversity and health of our county and consequently that of our planet.