New woodland planting in Warnford

At the parish meeting on the 28th November 2019 I spoke about a tree planting programme on my land at Warnford which is in the draft planning stage at present. This follows a programme of tree planting undertaken about 20 years ago many of which are now well established and visible from the footpaths throughout the farm.

The proposal to plant trees has been encouraged by a number of reasons such as a personal enthusiasm to add more trees to our valley landscape, to reverse the dramatic effects of chalara ash die-back disease on both the younger trees that we planted 20 years ago and the older more established woodlands, reducing soil run-off from the farmland, mitigating nitrate and phosphate run-off into the river and carbon sequestration.

There are eight public rights of way across the farm and so any planting we undertake will be visible from at least one of those rights of way as well as from other viewpoints in the valley. For this reason we are inviting suggestions about the project such as to what species we might plant. Examples of ideas proposed so far are to include a range of cherry tree species for a show of spring blossom amongst the native hardwood trees, to include a range of fruit trees to provide fruit for birds and mammals in the autumn and winter months and to consider alternatives to plastic tree guard tubes.

If you have ideas for us to feed into the draft plans please email andrew@gawthorpeestates.co.uk or telephone me on 01730 829330. I would be pleased to visit you to chat ideas through if that is helpful.