Planting for the PEOPLE
The Northern Forest is the nature project of the century – and it’s delivering in spades. Elisabeth Garton reports...
ONE CHILLY MARCH morning back in 2018, a skinny oak sapling was tucked into the soil on the Smithills Estate, a mile-wide wilderness on the outskirts of urban Bolton. It represented the first tree in the Woodland Trust’s greatest ever planting adventure, and the setting was spot-on – a damaged landscape ripe for change.
That simple act marked the birth of something seismic: a new Northern Forest, galloping across 25,000 square kilometres of town and country all the way from Chester to Whitby, Lancaster to Hull. And since that day, a mindblowing 13 million trees have taken root in 3,716 projects (see map below), enriching life in the North for both people and wildlife.
Projects completed in the Northern Forest so far.
Trees we’ll have planted across the region by 2043.
Saplings in the ground at Bolton’s Smithills Estate.
“We’re one of six core partners who joined hands to hatch this wildly ambitious plan,” recalls Nick Sellwood, the Trust’s affable project chief. “Fifty million trees over 25 years. It will add up to a £500 million investment – in job creation, biodiversity, flood mitigation, cleaner air, tourism, health...”
So far, Government grants have funded the forest partners to the tune of £120 million, while big-time backers including Aviva and Lloyds Banking Group have bankrolled masses of planting on farms, in schools and communities, as well as helping us transform sites like Smithills and Snaizeholme into showpieces for the Trust.
“The great news is, Defra has just committed another £100 million in the forest zone for the next four years through its national Trees for Climate programme,” adds Nick.
“That’s a huge investment, but we keep close tabs on the project’s impact, so we know it is already contributing £50 million of economic uplift annually. And as our trees mature, guzzling carbon and creating wild places people will love to explore, that figure is set to soar.”
Our core Northern Forest partners are the Community Forest Trust and four regional planting powerhouses: The Mersey Forest, the White Rose Forest, Greater Manchester’s City of Trees and Humber Forest. “Each of us then unlocks many more alliances,” says Nick, “all the way from the Rivers Trust to Kids Plant Trees, a little charity near where I live in Sheffield. We’ve teamed up with the Forestry Commission, national parks, country estates, parish councils... you name it. Thousands of hands have patted down the earth around these young trees – it’s a collective, connected effort.”
Volunteers of all stripes now have a literal stake in the forest’s success. Just this spring, a crew of 13 youngsters descended on Smithills to try ‘hedgehogging’ – planting oak trees in the midst of spiky hawthorns to deter deer from nibbling their baby leaves. Altogether, 180,000 saplings have now been planted at the Trust’s Bolton reserve.
“I’ve mucked in myself,” says Nick, “at Frodsham in Cheshire, where the Trust is rewilding an old golf course, and at Hayhills, north of Bradford, where an interfaith crowd of 350 Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and Muslims dug in 5,000 trees. On a drizzly day, the atmosphere was immense. People love planting trees – there’s this strong sense of camaraderie and purpose. It’s such a powerful thing to do.”
That quiet power has broad reach. In the grounds of Wakefield’s Camphill College, the White Rose Forest helped 65 young adults with special educational needs plant birch, cherry and guelder rose across ten acres, creating a calming outdoor learning space. Students came away with crucial work experience and tailored skills that directly chime with the needs of local employers – a valuable step toward their independence.
In the case studies that follow below, we explore the myriad benefits the forest brings, and meet some of the people who’ve made it happen. Eight years after that jump-start in Bolton, the momentum seems unstoppable: while 460 hectares of woods were planted in the 2020-21 season – equivalent to 650 football pitches – that tally rose by 150% in 2024-25.
“We’ve now started saying ‘at least’ 50 million trees will be planted by 2043,” grins Nick. “And based on what we’ve seen so far, that could be doubled.”
Even if those projections prove a tad optimistic, the evidence is irrefutable: the Northern Forest is galvanising communities and rejuvenating an entire region – one tree at a time.
“Thousands of hands have patted down the earth around these young trees. It’s a collective, connected effort.”
Nick Sellwood, Northern Forest
TREE POWERED!
The Northern Forest has brought together a supergroup of tree-loving partners. Four of England’s Community Forests have notched 3,138 planting projects across the region since 2018 (dark green on the map), while the Woodland Trust has chipped in 578 schemes of our own (shown in purple). And it’s working: researchers at Liverpool John Moores University have been reporting back on the positive impacts for the 13 million people who live within the forest’s bounds.
Read on to discover just a few of the projects the Northern Forest has supported – and the overall benefits it’s delivered so far...
TREE POWERED!
The Northern Forest has brought together a supergroup of tree-loving partners. Four of England’s Community Forests have notched 3,138 planting projects across the region since 2018 (dark green on the map), while the Woodland Trust has chipped in 578 schemes of our own (shown in purple). And it’s working: researchers at Liverpool John Moores University have been reporting back on the positive impacts for the 13 million people who live within the forest’s bounds.
Read on to discover just a few of the projects the Northern Forest has supported – and the overall benefits it’s delivered so far...
TREES FOR THE CLIMATE
Trees planted in the Northern Forest lock up 55,000 tonnes of carbon each year – equivalent to roughly 25,000 flights form London to New York.
TREES FOR NATURE
The Northern Forest has so far created an extra 100km2 of connected habitat networks for wildlife.
TREES FOR WATER
Billion
As they grow, the Northern Forest's new trees will slow the flow of 1.5 billion litres of water, retarding flooding and saving £700,000 every year.
TREES FOR JOBS
million
This is the economic uplift the Northern Forest delivers each year. Research shows 30 jobs are created for every 100 hectares of new woodland.
TREES FOR PEOPLE
Nearly 340,000 extra households are now less than a ten-minute walk from a wood they can visit – that's one million people with better access to nature and cleaner air.
55.000
The trees planted so far in the Northern Forest lock up 55,000 tonnes of carbon each year – roughly equivalent to 25,000 flights from London to New York.
WHITE ROSE FOREST
TREES FOR THE CLIMATE
“THE ESTATE IS roughly the shape of Africa, minus Egypt, and runs right down from the moorland tops to the river. There’s a lot of history here – my earliest map is dated 1716 – and the land has always been productive.”
So says Bernie Davies of the Denton Reserve, east of Ilkley, which styles itself “a rethink of 2,500 acres of Yorkshire countryside, rebalanced to prioritise nature”. The business includes a country house hotel, a dapper gastro-pub, and a new wood of 52,000 willows, oaks and cherries, created with help from the White Rose Forest – which has planted a stonking 2.5 million trees since 2020. The idea is to prove that profitable regenerative farming can co-exist with wildlife.
“If we want the globe to be habitable for our children, we’ve got to make a change,” Bernie says, “but no one will follow our lead if we lose a boatload of money. The challenge is to manage the land so it stores carbon, boosts biodiversity and is better for water – but still produces plenty of food.”
The estate once felled trees on a 30-year rotation – precisely the age their ability to sequester carbon really gets going. “We’ll stop all that and sell carbon credits to responsible, eco-conscious businesses instead. We hope their staff will be inspired to visit – plant trees, listen to the birds. And they can sample the venison, beef and pork we farm at the Penny Bun inn in Askwith, as well as fungi and fruit foraged from the land (pictured).”
Three years in, the project is already delivering for nature: “We’ve used trees and shrubs to soften the field edges,” adds Bernie, “creating great habitat for ground-nesting birds, mice and voles. Last year nightjars returned to a bit of birchwood that was once chock-full of pheasants for shooting. Merlins and kestrels now visit, and little and short-eared owls are breeding. We hope these populations will grow more robust as our trees mature.”
HUMBER FOREST
TREES FOR WATER
“SO MUCH LAND here is productive – farming is a huge part of our culture,” explains Andrew Mason of Humber Forest. “Wheat, barley, peas – these are the fields feeding Britain.”
Andrew’s organisation toils on behalf of trees in the far east of the Northern Forest zone, and since 2020 it has added over a million saplings in a challenging landscape for nature.
“At North Frodingham, near the sensitive headwaters of the River Hull, we’ve planted 800 trees to act as a barrier. As well as slowing the flow of stormwater to curb flooding lower down the catchment, their roots will filter out chemicals, absorbing phosphates and nitrates from agriculture before they reach the channel. It’s good news for the folk of Hull – their drinking water comes from that river.”
The new wood is working hard for wildlife, too: “We’ve plotted the trees in jagged zigzag alleyways for Daubenton’s bats to feed among – they are fishing bats, a protected species, and pick insects off the river. Barn owls nest here too, so we left 40% of the ground open for them to hunt, and feathered our woodland edges with hazel and blackthorn to attract voles and mice. There are also lots of goat willows and alders, which love marshy conditions – after two years, they’re already 5ft tall.”
1.5 billion
As they grow, the Northern Forest’s new trees will slow the flow of 1.5 billion litres of water, retarding flooding and saving £700,000 every year.
339,000
Nearly 340,000 extra households are now less than a ten-minute walk from a wood they can visit – that’s one million people with better access to nature and cleaner air.
MERSEY FOREST
TREES FOR PEOPLE
CHESHIRE WAS ONCE the fruit basket of the North West, but as villages expanded, its heritage orchards were lost.
Thackeray Drive Orchard, in suburban Chester, survived until 1950, when a housing estate was built. In 2021 the parish council teamed up with The Mersey Forest to put it back – 300 trees beside the locals’ footie pitch, including old apple varieties like Gooseberry Pippin, plums, pears and cherries. Last year children from that same estate sampled fresh juice from its fruit, at the community’s celebratory apple day.
“We’ve created ten orchards across Cheshire and Merseyside so far, with more in the pipeline,” says Steph Anderson. “We lay on pruning workshops to help people care for the trees, and everyone’s encouraged to help themselves to the fruit!”
CITY OF TREES
TREES FOR JOBS
CITIZEN FORESTERS – that’s what City of Trees calls the people who’ve signed up for its flagship volunteer programme to help green the streets of Greater Manchester. And since 2024 the Community Forest has been turning those opportunities into paid work through its green skills programme. It now has 11 recruits on its Urban Forestry Services Team, folk from diverse backgrounds who may have felt they lacked the qualifications or experience to enter the field via a traditional route.
“That was me at age 16,” explains Av Gurwicz (pictured), “and I was hooked. I landed a part-time role helping to run community planting events, showing people the ropes. It really helped me overcome my shyness, and at 17 I landed a job!”
The UFST’s work has spanned everything from planting 32 semi-mature trees at seven city fire stations to establishing 17,000 saplings at Greenbooth Reservoir near Rochdale, City of Trees’ largest new wood to date. At 20, Av now co-leads the team: “We are out in hail or shine, planting in spots that are too remote or technical for our volunteers. In total we’ve worked on 80 projects and planted 62,000 trees. I’ve now started a part-time degree too, training to become a professional forester.”
£50m
This is the economic uplift the Northern Forest delivers each year. Research shows 30 jobs are created for every 100 hectares of new woodland.
100km2
The Northern Forest has so far created an extra 100km2 of connected habitat networks for wildlife.
WOODLAND TRUST
TREES FOR NATURE
SINCE DAY ONE, the Woodland Trust has been delivering its own portfolio of Northern Forest projects – 578 new woods and counting. Our team of ten expert advisers help interested landowners to design their planting, sort out grant applications and maximise the impact for nature.
Chop Gate, at Bilsdale in the North York Moors, is a really special example. Here we’ve helped the charity Make It Wild to pepper more than 22,000 native trees and shrubs close to the tumbling River Seph. Planted in 2025, the scheme buffers scraps of old bluebell wood and a medieval holloway where cattle were once driven up onto the moor.
“It’s a lovely place to be, and we’ve been sensitive to its historic bones,” says Alasdair Fagan, who led on the project for the Trust. “We’ve planted both traditional woodland and wood pasture to entice red-listed birds like spotted flycatchers, and spaced some saplings so they grow into a new generation of veteran trees. There is a wildlife pond, drystone walls for stoats to hide in, and scrubby thickets for redpolls and yellowhammers. We hope that cuckoos and woodcocks will move in to breed too.”
