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CAP
PLANTING PROJECTS

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CAP Planting Winter 2025

PLANTING IN THE CALEDONIAN FOREST

This year CAP is chuffed to be supporting the work of leading rewilding charity Trees for LIfe to help grow trees in key areas across the Highlands of Scotland. 

 

Scotland's Caledonian Forest once covered an area of around 15,000km2 and was characterised by Scots pine trees, herds of grazing animals and predators like lynx and wolf. Wetter conditions & tree felling on a massive scale for fire wood, building and to make way for farming meant that by the 1950s only 1% of the original forest remained. 

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Focusing on this spectacular forest since 1993, Trees for Life foster biodiversity and encourage natural processes​

essential to life. From the iconic red squirrel, to hard-working beavers, they have worked since 1993 to bring more life back to the landscape. To date they have also grown almost two million trees to help bring this forest back. 

 

The Dundreggan tree nursery hums with activity as 80,000 - 100,000 saplings are carefully grown from seed each year. Focus is not just give to Scots pine, but also to the rarer species like aspen and mountain top woolly willow and dwarf birch. Rewilding weeks for volunteers are also available throughout the year. 

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© Trees For LIfe

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Planting in the Highlands © The Big Picture

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© Chris Aldridge

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CAP Planting September 2024

PLANTING KELP FORESTS

On 16 Sept 2024, CAP's partners at Mossy Earth & SeaForester took 33 trays of young kelp plants funded by CAP out of a lab in Portugal where they had been growing in optimum conditions attached to small stones, and dropped them into the sea by a protected reef off the coast of Cascais in Portugal.

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Kelp forests are not only important marine ecosystems providing food, protection and shade for marine species, they are also valued for their carbon sequestering abilities. 

Globally kelp forests cover 5x the area of coral reefs, but they are also declining 4x faster. Destructive fishing practices like beam trawling, plus other human activities, have been fast tracking kelp’s demise. However with energy thrown at protecting kelp forest locations and work around re-planting like this, the tide can turn and kelp forests will and are coming back. 

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Stink Films, Scout Productions & Denise Shenton Productions, thank you for funding round two of this important project. 

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CAP Tree Planting 2024

REIMAGINING

THE SOMERSET LEVELS

The devastating effects of floods in Somerset in 2013/14 inspired local group, Reimagining the Levels, to take action and plant trees and hedgerows throughout the area. They have succeeded in getting well over 110,000 trees planted since, helping to break up flood water and slowly channel it underground. The positive effects on habitat for wildlife, increased biodiversity and carbon sequestration also motivates them.

Somerset has some of the lowest tree cover in the UK (6%), well below the national average (12%). CAP is incredibly pleased to be working with RtL to boost that figure & help fund numerous tree and hedge planting projects at a local level. Funding this group means giving individual people living in vulnerable areas the opportunity to protect their homes and re-wild their landscapes. It is one of the most gratifying projects we have partnered yet. 

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Flooding on Somerset Levels

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CAP Tree Planting March 2024

HEDGE TREES IN SOMERSET

The Geranium Trust is a charity that provides a safe haven for anyone experiencing bereavement, isolation, loneliness or abuse in Yeovil. It is a 26 acre site set in the middle of the town, owned by a lovely gentlemen called Terrance 'Paul' Palfrey who has committed to turning the land into a thriving natural environment. Paul and his team welcome people who need to access a bit of peace & friendship by hosting lunches, tea parties, social groups, and importantly, gardening clubs.

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Planting trees at the site has been a priority and on March

3rd the team, assisted by volunteers from Reimagining the Levels, planted 1350 wildlife alluring hedge trees to make 300 metres of hedging.

 

Since the Second World War Britain has lost 50% of its hedges, and of those that remain 60% are poorly managed by being cut too often and too severely. They are an invaluable haven for insects & birds and form the corridors needed to give our wildlife cover and space.

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This project was largely funded by Stink Films. Superstars.

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Somerset Hedgerow 

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CAP Tree Planting March 2024

TEMPERATE RAINFOREST IN EXMOOR

In early March 2024, 1600 CAP trees were planted in the rare and unique TEMPERATE RAINFOREST in Exmoor National Park. This tiny refuge of woodland is called rainforest because it is located in the region's hyperoceanic climatic zone. This is an area that receives high rainfall & has relatively mild, year-round temperatures that provide the perfect humid conditions for a diverse range of wildlife. Intriguing and rare plants, including ancient ferns, lichens,

liverworts and mosses thrive there, growing on trees, boulders, around streams & on the ground.

 

The team at Exmoor National Park are carefully increasing tree cover in this zone. We're chuffed to have been able to support this; temperate rainforest is Europe’s equivalent to the Amazon Rainforest... there's a lot to love about it. 

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Temperate Rainforest in Exmoor

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CAP Kelp Planting 2023 - 2024

PLANTING KELP FORESTS IN THE SEA

We have now funded a new project that we're excited about - KELP FORESTS in Portugal. The project is being run by our planting partners at Mossy Earth who, in conjunction with marine groups, are using a system of kelp growing called GREEN GRAVEL. It involves seeding pebbles with kelp in trays in optimal conditions in a lab and then, once established, popping them in to the ocean in kelp friendly environments to grow.

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Three batches of approx 80 trays of green gravel have been popped into the water since July, with the next batch

to be planted in 2024. Each tray has the potential to cover approx 50 square meters of the ocean floor.  

 

Kelp grows quickly which is why people are excited about its carbon sequestering potential. The science however is not developed enough to guarantee locking away X amount of Co2. So when you fund kelp forests through CAP it would be as “a production’s investment into marine biodiversity”, it would not be to “acknowledge the production’s unavoidable carbon emissions”.

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Kelp Planting in Portugal

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CAP Tree Planting Feb 2023

PLANTING AT THE FOREST OF MARSTON VALE

On Thursday 9 Feb 2023 our fantastic tree planning partners at the Forest of Marston Vale planted 2000 CAP trees at their site in Bedfordshire. 

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It was a sunny day and the planting team did a fantastic job. I’m chuffed to say that, thanks to CAP's supporters, we have now funded the planting of over 6500 trees at The Forest. It’s a small but significant contribution to their planting programme which hopes to get 5 million trees in the ground.

The Forest is made up of 13 Community Woodlands (details can be found below) and last year it received the prestigious Green Flag Award for its flagship site, the Millennium Country Park. It’s the sixteenth consecutive Green Flag award won by the site, recognising the Park for its high standard of horticulture, safety and environmental management.

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The communities throughout the 61 square mile forest area continue to benefit from the 2 million + trees that have now been planted, enjoying the woodlands together with the local wildlife that now thrives there.

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Marston Forest Planting

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CAP Tree Planting Nov 2022

FOOD FORESTS IN SOMERSET

During the Autumn 2022 we were excited to partner some of the country’s leading tree specialists in a project to plant Food Forests in the UK. 


The team at Tree Source have a plan. They are planting food forests on farmland with a patchwork of locally adapted trees and plants that not only include native species such as oak, beech, hornbeam & fertility enhancing alder, but also smaller fruiting trees, nut trees & medicinal plants. Their planting designs nurture the underground mycorrhizal fungal networks that are now known to support tree growth, health and vitality, and they encourage space for biodiversity to thrive.


Food forests are an ancient form of farming practiced all

over the world which has been all but forgotten in Britain. They are a multi functional way to not only draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere but also to re-imagine trees as a productive part of agriculture providing food, fertility and medicines as well as contributing to soil retention and natural flood management. And on top of this, the multi-layered and species diverse planting designs mean that this type of woodland will have the best chance of withstanding the challenges of the changing climate.

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Thanks to a fantastic donation from Stink Films, CAP & a the Tree Source team planted 1118 trees in November 2022 on 14 hectares of stunning farmland at the new Tree Source nursery outside Bath.

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Food Forest Planting

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