Development of Lincolnshire woodland, hedges and orchards

Wally Grice who works for Lincolnshire County Council as a project officer was our speaker. Wally has experience in Forestry, Woodlands and the countryside for over 50 years. He joined Lincolnshire County Council to work on the Lincswood project.

This project is a joint programme between LCC and the Woodland Trust and has the aim to plant 200,000 trees in Lincolnshire over two years. Lincs CC has set a longer term target to plant 750,000 trees in the county, one for each resident.

The Government, through DEFRA has formed the Woodland Accelerator Fund and LCC applied and got funding for two project managers – Wally is one and a lady called Harriet is the other. They started work in 2023, initially organising their activity and since then have been gradually getting their work known and helping with applications for assistance to plant trees. Harriet, in her first week in the role managed to get £50k from the Kings Coronation Living Heritage Fund towards the planting and establishment of new orchards in the county.

In addition to woodlands, trees and hedgerows they can now include applications for help with orchards. In their first year they managed to get two orchards planted to test the system; one in Dunholme and the other at Lissington. They also managed, in this first year, to get approaching a kilometre of hedging planted and about a half hectare of trees. The second season was building partnerships, particularly with the Woodland Trust through their projects on more woodlands and more hedges.

The overall aim of this work is to ensure that the right trees go into the right locations and for the right reasons.

For big acreages of forest or woodland there is a Forestry Commission Eco Grant scheme. However, one of the main stumbling blocks applying for this, is the incredible bureaucracy involved, but Wally can offer his assistance.

In the first 2023 season Wally had four applications to process, three were approved and one is nearly there. He now has a further three of these large projects due to start in March or April and hopes they will be complete before his contract expires in 2028.

Rtn. Mark Strawson agreed about this bureaucracy issue as he found the same when Rotary planted some 400 trees in De Aston Field. The Woodland Trust are involved at a lower level with fewer hectares to plant. For these smaller projects, the Woodland Trust will provide the trees and their protection, the landowner would normally pay 25% of the cost. If the project was to be part of the Lincswood project then LCC will be involved and the landowner’s contribution could be reduced to 10%. Either Wally or Harriet would do all the forms and applications to enable it to go ahead.

Below half a hectare the only help available will be from LCC, the Woodland Trust. If someone has a small patch of land, they can contact the Lincswood project and Wally or Harriet will come out and evaluate what is required and what is available and advise on the best way forward. The partnership with the Woodland Trust is aiming to plant around 5 kilometres of hedge this year and some 10Ha of trees. Again, there are all sorts of restrictions and requirement to participating in this scheme – minimum of 100m of hedge, which must be new hedge which originally had to connect two separate woodlands. However, due to the very limited woodland area in Lincs this latter requirement has been removed.

As with the woodland, assistance supporting hedge planting through LCC requires 25% cost contribution from the landowner and in the same way as in woodlands if the landowner applies through the Lincwoods scheme the cost would reduce to 10%.

Regarding orchards with traditional varieties provided by the East of England Apples and Orchards project and with help from the Kings Coronation Fund they have managed to establish 33 orchards in our county – all with traditional varieties. There are two in Market Rasen, a large one by the Skate park and one by DeAston Field. An orchard needs to be a minimum of five trees – the DeAston one has five trees. For this year they have made a partnership with the Lincolnshire Coop which has provided funds and this has allowed a further 11 orchards to be introduced into Lincolnshire.

For the next two years, through agreement with the Woodland Trust, a further 200 trees are to be planted so this will give a further number of new orchards for the county. Orchards are fully funded so you get provided with trees, protection and advice. This is the only part of the scheme that is fully funded.

These schemes are not just for the landowners; they are for the communities that they are sited in. The orchards planted in this scheme are all community orchards. Regarding the woodlands and tree planting these are often with community involvement but public access to many of these is limited. However, there are other benefits to these plantings – it was climate change that was an initial driver, but they provide wildlife habitats, making very beneficial environment corridors and connections.

Rtn. Hugh Nott wondered why with all the effort going into planting these trees there seems to be no effort made to look after them and maintain them later. Hugh had particularly noticed that tree planting on roadside verges and hedgerows seems to have been a complete waste time as most had now died due to last year’s dry spring. Wally agreed it was a problem as most of the grants available did not cover subsequent maintenance but there was only one exception and that is the Commission Eco scheme where £400 per ha is made available for the first 15 years.

The Lincswood project is very keen to get more schools involved. Currently they have about 20% of their projects involving schools and they would love to get more, and most of this 20% were schools that they had specifically targeted. Rtn. Ron suggested that we should be able to come up with a suitable scheme to involve a school. He thanked Wally for giving us something to think about and an excellent presentation which may be of interest to others in the locality, if not across the County.

Get in touch via the Lincswood web site: https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/trees There is also other information on the Woodland Trust web site: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/press-centre/2024/07/lincwoods-project-to-plant-200-000-trees-across-lincolnshire/

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