Bare root bonanza.

Thankfully our long time arranged planting day with Raleigh UK Alumni Society dawned sunny with no threat of rain. After the February we have had we were very grateful for this.

We had been promised 650 bare rooted trees by The Woodland Trust, along with stakes and shelters. These were due to be delivered on Friday but I hadn’t heard anything by the Friday morning and so was getting a tad nervous. A call to Thorpe Trees near York (who were delivering them) confirmed that they were on their way. Relief.

10 volunteers met on site in the morning and eventually got planting after all the usual sorting of trees and shelters. Lunch (leek and tattie soup) soon followed and it looked like we may not get them all planted, but a stirling effort in the afternoon achieved our aim. As we had our post-work cuppas we were rewarded with a barn owl hunting in the sun around us. We also heard curlew ‘bubbling’, green woodpecker ‘yaffling’ and oystercatchers doing whatever they do. It felt like spring. We even found some barren strawberry in flower!

Many thanks to all who turned up to help. Seemingly an enjoyable day was had by all.

Our volunteer day tomorrow (Monday 28th Feb) will be planting willow in the wet bits among yesterdays planting, so we should end up with about 750 trees in total, creating a wildlife corridor from the Arkle up to the ”allotments” on Fremington Edge (where we plan to plant a ‘few’ trees in the future…watch this space).

Martin WW