Record breaking planting season for Raise: Cumbria Community Forest

Communities across Cumbria will benefit from the creation of new woodland, following our record tree planting season!

Tree planting takes place between November and March every year and last season, over 87ha of woodland was planted within the Raise: Cumbria Community Forest boundaries – that’s equivalent to the area of Buttermere!

Overall, our team and our partners planted 111,108 trees, including 47 species of trees and scrub. We also engaged with over 1500 people across 23 sites – from Carlisle in the north to Barrow in the south.

Our tree and hedgerow planting is supported with funding from the Trees for Climate programme, part of the Defra Nature for Climate Fund. Our flexible scheme provides landowners with grants to cover up to 100% of all woodland creation project costs including infrastructure and ongoing maintenance.

Sites include private landowners such as farms and estates, school grounds, and parks owned by local authorities. All schemes are bespoke and co-designed with the landowner and local communities, ensuring that all needs are met and any vision for the land is realised and fulfilled.

James Cobbold, Director of Raise: Cumbria Community Forest, said:

“We are delighted to have delivered a record-breaking year of woodland creation – both in number of hectares and number of trees planted.

“Our success is in part due to our collaborative approach and the strength of our partnerships. We work closely with likeminded organisations to not only increase tree coverage countywide, but to increase access to woodland and green spaces for everyone living and working here.

“We are particularly interested in learning from groups who experience the greatest barriers, such as neurodivergent communities. We’ve started working with a small number of groups and organisations this year to explore their relationship to nature and our 25 year plan focuses on developing this area throughout the lifespan of the forest.

“It is important to us that people are at the heart of our programmes and that we work with communities to understand their needs – we were delighted to have engaged with over 1500 people of all ages last season and we are excited to see what can be achieved in the coming year!”

Our team are busy finalising schemes for this season and will soon start planting. Follow their progress on our social channels.

If you are a landowner interesting in planting trees on your land, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch to speak to a member of our team.