City of Trees recently joined forces with rugby league club, Salford City Roosters to plant trees, greening their club’s grounds and increasing the social value for the local community, players and staff.
Members of the club planted a new woodland adjacent to the Worsley Brook including a variety of native tree species including Oak, Rowan, Birch and Hazel. The new woodland will create an important habitat corridor for wildlife as well as visually enhancing the area for both the rugby club members and the local community that use this space.
Before the trees could be planted a lot of hard work was needed to remove a jungle of brambles, and this difficult but essential task was carried out by the Probation Service’s Community Pay Back Team.
In addition to the new woodland, ten semi mature cherry trees were planted to form an avenue along the northern boundary of the rugby club pitches. These new trees will look a picture in the spring when they blossom.
The cherry trees have been funded through Defra’s Northern Forest (Grow Back Greener) fund and a generous donation from the Director of Warrington-based environmental consultancy, TEP, Fran Hesketh to mark his 40 years in the environmental sector. Local company, UBU Environmental Limited also supported the venture by providing four tonnes of soil which was needed to create the right conditions for planting the trees in.
Fran, his work colleagues, and rugby club members (with support from City of Trees) teamed up to plant the trees.
Fran Hesketh, said:
“I’m incredibly privileged to have a job that gets trees planted and habitats created. 40 years ago, when I graduated, my first trees were in the Scottish uplands. For the past 30 years, I’ve been based in the North West and have enjoyed working with City of Trees on many occasions. They do great work with community groups and I am really pleased to help plant an avenue of flowering cherries at Salford Roosters. TEP is based in Warrington, a rugby league town, so it’s particularly special to help this incredible community club plant their bit of the Northern Forest.”
Pete Stringer, City of Trees, added:
“It’s been great working with Salford City Roosters Rugby club, they have really demonstrated that sports activities can happily co-exist alongside trees. We would actively encourage any sports clubs with a bit of room for trees to get in touch with us to discuss what planting opportunities there might be on their grounds that would benefit people, wildlife and help reduce our vulnerability to climate change.”