Opportunities for private land owners to support tree planting

Image of sloping windswept hillside showing newly planted trees

Tree planting can enhance your land and business in a number of ways: 

  • It offers shelter and shade for livestock
  • It improves soil quality
  • It attracts pollinators and other wildlife to your land
  • It helps to manage water flow and soil erosion

We are involved in Trees for Climate - a national, multi-million pound woodland creation programme with one of the most competitive and flexible grant schemes for tree planting available today.

We can help you plan, fund and deliver woodland creation projects of all sizes that will bring real value to your land.

There are grants available through the Great Western Community Forest (GWCF) to support all of these planting projects including:

  • community woodlands creation
  • woodland creation on private farm land
  • community orchards
  • hedgerows and shrub belts
  • agroforestry
  • standard trees within urban green spaces
  • street tree planting
  • small scale planting
  • planting within school grounds

Woodland examples we can support

Multi-purpose woodland (more than 5 ha)

  • Minimums of 1,600 tree per ha
  • No single species more than 70%
  • Up to 20% woody shrubs

Low density tree planting

  • Minimum of 25 trees per ha
  • Minimum final canopy cover of 20% across area planted
  • Species appropriate to context

Small scale tree planting (0.5-4.99 ha)

  • Minimum of 1,100 tree per ha
  • Up to 20% woody shrubs

Hedgerows with or without trees

  • 5 plants per linear metre
  • Trees planted every 15 metres as appropriate
  • 70% native or locally characteristics

Very small scale tree planting (0.1-0.49 ha)

  • Minimum of 1,100 trees per ha
  • Up to 20% woody shrubs
  • Fruit trees accepted 

Natural colonisation 

  • Must achieve minimum of 60% woody cover and 100 trees per ha within ten years

Progress so far 

Year 1 - 2020/21

  • Council owned land was the primary source of sites to deliver tree planting. The Trees for Climate grant enabled us to plant 15 hectares of new planting at Pentylands Country Park, Moredon Playing Fields, Coleshill and Brimstone Farm.

Year 2 – 2021/22 

  • The focus turned to woodland planting on non-Council owned land. We created 21 hectares of new woodland, together with street tree and smaller community tree planting schemes, across 18 sites in the Community Forest area.

Year 3 – 2022/23

  • 12 hectares of new tree planting including sites set for natural regeneration and street trees. 

Year 4 – 2023/24

  • In year 4 we are hoping to achieve around 37 hectares of woodland creation and tree planting. Locations are being identified and undergoing review for their suitability. Once fully assessed and agreed, these locations will be listed so volunteers will be able to identify locations they wish to get involved. 

We welcome any suggestions and ideas for tree planting and woodland creation projects throughout the GWCF. To enable this, the boundary of the GWCF has been extended to cover areas of Wiltshire, South Gloucester, South Oxfordshire and West Berkshire.  

For further information about the Trees for Climate project in Swindon, and details on how to get involved, e-mail CommunityForest@swindon.gov.uk.

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