Every household in Wales to be given a free tree to plant

EVERY household in Wales is to be offered a free tree to plant as part of a scheme to tackle climate change, the Welsh Government has announced.

The scheme will give people the chance to choose a tree of their own to plant or have one planted on their behalf by Coed Cadw, the Woodland Trust. Trees will be available to collect from March from one of five regional hubs, with 20 more hubs to be established across Wales by next October.

Deputy minister for climate change Lee Waters said the project is estimated to cost around £2m.

Visiting one of the trust’s woodland creation projects near Gnoll Park in Neath, Mr Waters said he hoped the campaign would inspire families to go on planting trees themselves in the future.

“We need to plant lots more trees to meet our climate change targets by the end of this decade – we have to plant 86 million more trees in Wales,” he said.

“It’s a practical thing, because if every household planted a tree, we’d have a million trees planted. But it’s also about awareness-raising and getting people to think about nature and the role trees can have.”

Mr Waters admitted individual treeplanting was not the answer to reaching the target, and said Welsh landowners, such as farmers, would need to embrace tree growth for the country to see a real difference.

It is believed that around 10% of land used for food production needs to be turned into woodland.

“Primarily we need farmers to be planting more trees on their land,” Mr Waters said. “Ten per cent is not a huge shift. There’s good practical reasons for why trees can help farmers go about their normal business.”