New woodlands for South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership are helping teams across the region with their plans to create new woodlands for local people to enjoy.

After months of planning, spades are finally in the ground. Creating new woodlands across South Yorkshire for the benefit of local people. Thanks to funding from the Woodland Trust’s Grow Back Greener programme, part of the Northern Forest, the projects will involve the creation of 15.93ha of woodland using a total of 14,936 trees.

The Northern Forest aims to establish at least 50 million new trees by 2043. This will help to transform the landscape from Liverpool to the Yorkshire Coast.

The Northern Forest is being delivered by a core partnership involving the Woodland Trust, four community forests – Manchester City of Trees, The Mersey Forest, Humber Forest and the White Rose Forest – and the Community Forest Trust.

Six sites are being funded across Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham. Two of these are trialling innovative practices for woodland creation. By using a combination of tree seeding and mycorrhizal fungi to provide a suitable environment for trees to grow.

At Magnet Field in Bentley, Doncaster contractors are starting on the ground preparation of this site but leaving those areas that are already showing signs of natural regeneration- the sapling trees that have seeded from the adjacent woodland.

At Netherwood Country Park in Barnsley, both conventional tree planting and this more experimental method of tree seeding is being used to create woodlands in two areas of the park.

‘The idea of these methods is for a slow change over time as the glade vegetation succeeds to a woodland habitat through the incorporation of tree seeding/community planting through several community engagement sessions. We are also trialling the use of mycorrhizal fungi to see whether this helps the trees establish on these urban sites where soils can make it difficult for trees to take root and grow. We hope trials like these will help a better understanding of how to work on these urban sites’, Alex Evans, South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership Senior Project Officer explains.

Further more conventional woodland planting is being carried out with communities at Swanee Field in Kendray, Barnsley and sites at Sheffield Road, Conisbrough and Crossfield Lane, Skellow in Doncaster. This is in addition to a large site which has already started to be planted at Dinnington, Rotherham.