Despite storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge paying us all an unwelcome visit in the past month we managed to pull off 11 tree planting events (at the time of writing, we have another 3 to go). This season, we will have planted:

• 200 trees with kids with kids from Samuel Whitbread Academy
• 420 trees with Bedfordshire Young Farmers
• 2468 trees with our corporate friends and partners
• 1500 with the general public
• 10 trees with the outgoing High Sheriff Meryl Dolling and the incoming High Sheriff Susan Lousada (pictured above)

We also planted 1715 trees at schools across the Forest with 368 kids (as part of the DEFRA 1 Million Trees project) and 100 trees at our next planting site near Kings Wood, Ampthill (pictured below). That's a lot of trees!

Onwards and upwards (literally)

Next year, our site sits right on top of the hill by the ancient woodland at King's Wood, near Ampthill, looking out across the Forest. We're in the design phase at the moment, and have had soil surveys (to determine what trees we should plant) and landscape surveys (to determine where on the slopes we should plant/turn to meadows) done already. The site is approx 38 hectares (94 acres) and we're planting somewhere in the region of 57,000 trees, over 3 years, on behalf of the Woodland Trust.

The site is right near Houghton House, on the northern edge of the Greensand Ridge and right next to the Timberland Trail, which is a beautiful, 13 mile walk across most of the Forest. 

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Land is expensive and managing woodlands is expensive. It isn't as simple as putting a tree in the ground and walking away - it costs £20 to plant one tree and look after it for 5 years. So trees don't cost the earth, but they might just save it.