Thousands of volunteers across Wales help restore hedgerows

Over the past 3 years, the Long Forest project aimed at making ‘hedgerows important again’ has worked with over 3,000 volunteers to plant over 119,000 trees within hedgerows across Wales. The army of volunteers have physically improved 34,628 metres of hedgerow with a further 113, 063 metres now under a regime of progressive improvement despite working through drought, flooding, ‘The Beast from the East’ and Storms Ciara and Dennis!

The Long Forest project has also established 8 community tree nurseries which are raising young tree stock from locally collected native seed, a sustainable method of helping future tree-planting schemes and protection against tree disease being introduced via imported stock.  As a project there has been an emphasis on education, delivering formal training for over 100 landowners across Wales and over 1000 volunteers received training on hedgerow management. There are also free online resources on hedgerow management available on the Long Forest website www.longforest.cymru.

The Long Forest app was created, which was designed to engage members of the general public with hedgerows and learn about tree identification. The easy to use surveying app has generated over 48,000 metres of hedgerow data which will allow an understanding of how our landscape is changing in Wales.

The Long Forest Project has been developed by Keep Wales Tidy in partnership with the Woodland Trust, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

Hannah Wilcox Brooke, Long Forest Project Co-ordinator, Keep Wales Tidy said;

“We are delighted to have delivered such fantastic results across Wales that are sustainable and continue to improve our Welsh landscape. Thank you to all the thousands of volunteers who were involved across Wales’

If you would like to learn more about the Long Forest Project or access the free resources, visit www.longforest.cymru for more information.