People flock to see special planting event
The planting of the 250,000th tree at Fordham Hall Estate also marked the last tree planted as part of a four year woodland creation project on the site.
Despite torrential rain, people camped overnight and the local Forestry Officer cycled 16 miles, even getting caught in floods on the way, in order to witness this momentous event.
The tree was planted by Ronald Blythe, patron of the project and author of Akenfield among other works, assisted by James Sinclair. James was the 500,000 young person to plant a tree as part of the Tree For All campaign. The campaign aims to involved 1 million children in planting 12 million trees over five years.
In total 300 acres of new woodland have been planted at Fordham and we are about to start work on creating 200 acres of grassland and enhancement works along a 2km stretch of the River Colne too.
During the same weekend, another 8000 trees were planted with the help of 100 scouts and 200 local people.
A group also came from as far a field as Leeds to see the trees planted, in order to assist their training for a planned tree planting project of their own in South America.
