The tree planting season finishes at the end of March, so we have been frantically planting the trees that we organised two years ago together with Mersey Forest and Maghull Town Council.
On Saturday, the local community planted approximately 637 trees (pictured), forming a small wood and two hedges on a field next to the idyllic Millbank Lane, Maghull, on a smallholding belonging to Joanne, Keith and Ollie. It was a beautiful day, enhanced by the cheerful and hard-working volunteers. We even had an impromptu visit from Patrick (Maghull Town Council Leader) and later by June (Mayer of Sefton) who were coincidentally having separate country walks and stumbled across us!
The background to the tree planting initiative for Maghull is that two years ago when undertaking another project on Stafford Moreton Way(1) we developed a positive relationship with Mersey Forest, resulting in Patrick McKinley (MTC Leader), Alex Spencer (MTC Amenities Manager), Ben Greenaway (Mersey Forest) and myself planning a series of Maghull sites for tree planting (4). Ben rescued several thousand trees that were going to be bizarrely chipped, so following an advert on the community page we were able to store the trees in a process called ‘healing’(2) last April until now. Joanne kindly agreed for us to use her land and her son Ollie and neighbour Dave and myself, trimmed, bundled and planted 4000 trees, whilst Ollie did a fantastic job in watering them through two months of drought and beyond(3). So far we have planted 1485 trees at Bobby’s Wood(5), 20 at St George’s Primary School, 250 at Moss Side Cricket Club (Park Lane, Maghull)(6), with plans to plant 1200 trees in two Maghull parks before the end of March, 13 mature trees in Bobby’s Wood and 17 trees on to roads in Maghull this week, and a further 100 in Millbank.
Sadly, following a tree survey, three years ago Maghull lost 50 mature trees, so we are delighted that these trees will not only help to compensate but also help to start responding to the local and international climate emergency, in the nations lead up to the world environmental conference in Glasgow(7), whilst increasing local biodiversity for wildlife habitat and food. We have already started planning for the next tree planting season in November 2021. Should anyone like to get involved in the next two social distancing tree planting events, please contact woodendcwp@gmail.com In the meantime, we are now in the second of three crowdfunding projects to improve the gateway into Maghull at Bobby’s Wood/Woodend (junction of Liverpool Road South and Northway). We have had an unprecedented response with the community donating 150 shrubs to populate a 50x4m vacant border and would be delighted for further plants donations before the end of the dormant growth period in March. Our latest crowdfunding campaign has raised £185 towards our target of £3-5,000 target for new plants here, you can donate and watch a small introductory video at www.justgiving.com/crowdfund/woodend.
Finally, a huge thank you to Joanne’s family for caring so well for our trees, and also to the fantastic volunteers who not only helped make a difference to our environment but also made it such an enjoyable day. An enormous thank you to Mersey Forest for the fencing, trees, canes, spirals and Ben for his invaluable time on his day off. Many thanks, Friends of Maghull and District (FOMD) 1 www.spacehive.com/stafford-moreton 2 Healing: planting bundles of tree whips into a trench, to keep them alive whilst discouraging growth, prior to planting, in the tree planting season between November and March. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98E3ApA7cmQ 3 https://www.facebook.com/…/permalink/636772660384124 4 https://www.facebook.com/…/permalink/623664078361649 5 https://www.facebook.com/…/permalink/775302356531153 6 https://www.facebook.com/…/permalink/809184286476293 https://www.facebook.com/…/permalink/781487769245945 7 https://ukcop26.org/