The White Rose Forest helps landowners plan, fund and plant woodlands for the benefit of all
The White Rose Forest is dedicated to planting trees and woodland that help wildlife and local communities – whether that’s to improve air quality in towns and cities, slow the flow of flood water, or improve wildlife corridors. It has a vision of making Yorkshire the greenest and healthiest place in England and works with a wide array of partners and landowners to achieve this.
The organisation’s programme director Guy Thompson says: ‘Increasing tree and woodland cover is valuable for communities, businesses and the environment.
Our job is to offer a free public service to landowners. We can fund and help design woodland projects from 1,000 square metres in size and include features such as hedgerows, wood pasture and community orchards,’ he explains. ‘With a team working across North and West Yorkshire we can provide as much support as is needed with the planning and planting process, and help landowners access the generous public funding currently available for woodland creation. With funding options that can cover 100 per cent of all project costs, including up to 15 years of maintenance payments, there’s never been a better time to plant trees,’ he adds.
How they help
‘We have a saying – the right tree in the right place. Part of our job is to help the landowner make the best decisions for their land and the first step is for them to contact us via our website to let us know where they want to plant. One of our team will then get in touch to gather more details and arrange a site visit – avital step before the planning stage to make sure we understand the landowner’s vision for their land.’
Many landowners want to leave a long term legacy that’s going to help their land and wildlife. When Silsden resident Linda Arter retired she wanted to do something with her two-acre meadow, not for financial gain, but that gave back to the environment and the community. ‘The woodland will be there for my children, and my grandchildren,’ she says. ‘And that’s a nice thought, that I instigated that, in a small field in Silsden.’
Linda shares that once she had contacted the White Rose Forest, the team took care of everything – from arranging approval and funding to planning the planting. ‘They held my hand through it and made the process very, very easy indeed,’ she says.
For Jill Feenan, a landowner near Ilkley, it was about continuing environmental work she’d already started. She says: ‘It provided an opportunity for us to continue and extend the tree planting which we began seven years ago. The aim for us is to promote biodiversity and restore the woodland that has always been here and extend it to link
