Where will the 20 Trees be planted?
The 20 trees bought with this voucher will be planted in one of our sites in the Lake District National Park. We have several locations which we are in the process of planting. We are always on the hunt for local bits of land which are agriculturally poor to buy up and plant trees on so there will be plenty more fields to come in the future where the 20 trees bought with this voucher could be planted!
What is Buy Land Plant Trees?
Buy Land Plant Trees (BLPT) is our Community Interest Company that we set up to, well, buy land and plant trees. About 10% of the profit from every purchase made with Chimney Sheep Ltd (apart from this voucher where 100% of the profit will be given to BLPT) goes towards the project.
We buy land that is agriculturally poor, that can’t sustain much livestock grazing and is rubbish for arable use. There is a lot of that sort of land around Cumbria. Wet, boggy, dominated by rushes. Once upon a time most of the landscape would have been covered in trees. This has been removed over the centuries, for farming, shipbuilding, mining, iron and steel working. The landscape that we look at as having a bleak beauty, is a consequence of intensive agricultural and industrial use. We plant trees to create a more diverse habitat and for carbon capture. As it is a Community Interest Company it’s “asset locked”. This means that any donations made to the company stay within it, in perpetuity. All the fields we buy and woodlands we create remain in ownership of the company for as far into the future as we can glimpse. The idea is not to extract timber, but to have trees that become big and old and gnarly and over time provide homes for all kinds of wildlife.
What are the benefits of planting trees?
There are lots of reasons! It captures carbon, creates wildlife habitat, reduces erosion and reduces flooding (to name a few!). Planting trees is just an all-round good way of helping the environment. We can’t do much about everything happening in other parts of the world like deforestation, the use of unsustainable resources, the huge amounts of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere, the list goes on... BUT, we can take action locally which is exactly what we have done. Planting trees makes the world a better place.
