Thousands of trees will be planted to form new woods

THREE tree planting sessions as part of the Rossendale Forest scheme will begin this weekend.

They will be held at Maden Recreation Ground, Edenfield Recreation Ground and Cowpe Recreation Ground on Saturday, January 15, Sunday, January 16 and Tuesday, January 18 respectively.

In total 1,070 trees will be planted at the sites, with 570 at the Bacup site, 300 in Edenfield and 200 in Cowpe.

If you’d like to help at the first session, do not just turn up without pledging to plant in advance via bit.ly/ rbcforest1

The scheme was delayed from last month after Rossendale council said “supply chain issues” meant they did not get the expected delivery of trees.

Thousands of trees are to be planted at sites across Rossendale to create new woods, collectively described as ‘Rossendale Forest.’

The work comes as many ash trees in Rossendale and across the UK are being lost to a fungus which causes ‘dieback.’ But there is hope that practical work to plant young trees and the growth in natural immunity within trees will gradually counterbalance the loss over the next 50 years.

Rossendale council’s environmental services team is running a recycling scheme where they collect Christmas trees and turn them into woodchip for use in Valley parks.

An estimated six million real Christmas trees end up in landfill each year.

Visit rossendale.gov.uk/ Christmastree or phone 01706 217777 option 3 to book your tree collection.