CAP
PLANTING PROJECTS

CAP Planting Winter 2025

PLANTING AT HAM HILL IN SOMERSET

Ham Hill is one of Britain's largest and most impressive iron age hill forts, inhabited 5000 years ago by the Durotriges tribe. Today, it is 427 acres of spectacular wild flower meadows, woodlands and view points, peppered with ancient footprints from the past.

The whole place is abundant with life. Calcareous grasslands are home to wildflowers like bee orchid, wild thyme, birds foot trefoil and yellow rattle, attracting butterflies such as marbled white and large skipper. Hedgerows and fresh water features enrich the biodiversity, supporting species like stonechat and emperor

dragonflies. At dusk you can see pipistrelles, noctule and serotine bats and glow-worms light up the grassland edges. With its incredible views across Somerset it is quite a place!

Ham Hill has five woodlands which are home to the rare hazel dormouse. This coming winter teams of volunteers will help plant 2000 CAP trees to bridge two of the woodlands - Pit & Horse - in order to extend their range. A huge thank you to the brilliant Stink Films who are funding the lion's share of this project.

CAP Planting Winter 2025

PLANTING IN THE MERSEY FOREST

We're excited to be planting with a new team at the Mersey Forest Foundation over the Winter 2025/2026. The Forest is one of England’s 15 Community Forest which was established in 1991 and has planted 10 million trees to date across Cheshire and Merseyside. The drive behind the forest was to address post-industrial dereliction and poor environmental quality facing the area.

Planting has taken place across cities, private land, farms & public spaces, boosting wild space and corridors for biodiversity to thrive in. It has brought together people and communities, businesses & schools and has big plans to continue planting into the future. This winter we will be planting 1180 trees both in and near to Liverpool thanks to the brilliant Left Bank Pictures.

CAP Planting Winter 2025

PLANTING ASPEN & OTHER RARE TREES IN SCOTLAND

We're thrilled to be teaming up with EADHA in 2025, one of the leading experts in propagating and planting aspen trees in Scotland. Their tree nursery in Bishopton, Renfrewshire, hosts the national collection of aspen clones, producing thousands of rare trees to be planted in woodland creation and restoration projects each year.

Aspen is scarce in many parts of Scotland due to its irregular flowering and seed production and because it is irresistible as a meal for sheep and deer. Eadha is a social enterprise working with community groups, corporate teams and people of all ages and backgrounds who come and join them for planting. We're looking forward to planting with them! Site visits are welcomed.

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.

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.

Dundreggan tree nursery © Trees for Life.jpg

Red squirrel_Credit_SCOTLAND The Big Picture.jpg

Planting in the Highlands © The Big Picture

Glen Affric Landscape © Chris Aldridge.jpg

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.

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.

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

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 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 pleased to be working with RtL to boost that figure. In the spring 2024, 1,867 CAP trees were planted with 4,250 more going in this winter. 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.

Flooding on Somerset Levels

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.

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.

This project was largely funded by Stink Films. Superstars.

Somerset Hedgerow

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.

Temperate Rainforest in Exmoor

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.

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”.

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.

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.

The communities throughout the 61 square mile forest area continue to benefit from the 2.75 million + trees that have now been planted, enjoying the woodlands together with the local wildlife that now thrives there.

Marston Forest Planting

©.Forest of Marston Vale

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.

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.

Food Forest Planting

CAP Tree Planting Autumn 2022 - 2023

RIVERSIDE PLANTING IN SCOTLAND

Thanks to CAP's awesome clients, a whopping 10,780 trees have been planted from Oct 2022 to Oct 2023 in two locations. The first is the beautiful Kyle of Sutherland catchment in Scotland, the second is in the Cairngorms National Park.

The planting has been overseen by our planting partners at Mossy Earth and has again been focused on riparian (riverside) planting with a view to protecting rivers in Scotland. See below (Autumn 2021 planting) for more detail.

Riiparian Planting Zone

CAP Tree Planting Feb 2022

PUTTING THE FOREST BACK INTO MARSTON VALE

We are delighted to say that 4500 CAP trees were planted 6th Feb 2022 at the Forest of Marston Vale in Bedfordshire. Local trees were planted by wonderful volunteers in wild weather & high winds under the umbrella of our planting partners at the Forest of Marston Vale Trust.

The Forest of Marston Vale is 61 square miles of land set between Bedford and Milton Keynes. It was a very different place before the Forest of Marston Vale Trust came along. Massive pits had been dug throughout the countryside to supply Stewartby Brickworks with clay, many of which were then filled with waste and became landfill. Tree cover was a pitiful 3%, a third of the national average at the time. To help the area recover from the effects of these industries, the Government made the area a Community Forest (one

of 12 in the UK) in the early 90s. The idea was that planting trees and using woodlands would make life better for people and wildlife as well as the environment. Since then, the Forest Charity has planted an incredible 2 million trees and have transformed the landscape by planting twelve thriving woodlands with bike paths, nature trails, picnic spots and wild space. They’re working towards 30% tree cover in the whole area which means planting another 5 million trees. We’re pleased to be playing a small part in helping them get there.

The Forest of Marston Vale’s community focus is a massive appeal and being just a couple of hours outside London, site visits are both easy and encouraged.

CAP Tree Planting Autumn 2021

RIVERSIDE PLANTING IN THE KYLE OF SUTHERLAND

In the Autumn of 2021, CAP funded the planting of 2250 indigenous trees along the Carron & Oykel rivers in the Kyle of Sutherland in the Highlands in Scotland. The planting location was at a key site for riparian (riverside) woodland restoration with Atlantic salmon, otters and white-tailed eagles all calling it home.

Centuries of tree felling and overgrazing by sheep and deer has stripped Scotland’s riverbanks of its woodlands, threatening the wildlife that depend on it. On top of this, thanks to climate change, Scotland's rivers are warming making conditions difficult for both flora and fauna.

The good news is that riparian woodlands are nectar for rivers. The tree cover provides shade and cools the temperatures, falling leaves infuse the waters with nutrients, and tree roots stabilise the river's banks and help prevent flooding.

In partnership with the Kyle of Sutherland Fisheries Trust, our planting partners at Mossy Earth are overseeing this riverbank project, planting vast numbers of trees including alder, downy birch, willows, hazel, bird cherry, elm and aspen.

Planting in The Kyle of Sutherland

CAP Tree Planting Summer 2021

REWILDING IN THE CALEDONIAN FOREST

In June 2021, 3125 CAP trees were planted at the stunning Alladale Wilderness Reserve by our planting partners at Mossy Earth.

Alladale is a key site for re-wilding. It forms part of the great Caledonian Forest which once covered most of Scotland and was filled with historic Scots pine and beautiful broadleaf trees. Centuries of tree felling for timber and farmland has meant this vast forest has been reduced to just 1% of its former range.

Between 2009 and 2012 Paul Lister, owner of Alladale, completed phase one of a project to re-forest the land by planting 920,000 saplings within the estate’s 23,000 acres. Our trees have gone into phase two of this project to plant a further 2,000 acres with trees.

The regeneration of Alladale’s woodland has paved the way for the successful re-introduction of red squirrels & wild cat to the area. Paul Lister is hoping to be the first location in the UK to re-introduce wolves.