700 trees were planted at Hetley Pearson Recreation Ground. Mayor of the Borough of Broxtowe, Councillor Michael Brown joined children from Trent Vale Infants School to plant a mixture of native trees, including cherry, hazel holly and hawthorn, with another group of children from Beeston Rylands School attending in the afternoon to help complete the task.
The event was in partnership with Beeston and District Civic Society, who donated £1,000 towards providing 10 large oak trees and protective fencing around the area and Nottinghamshire County Council’s Greenwood Team, who provided plant material and organised the school involvement.
Chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, Councillor Helen Skinner said: “This is a fantastic partnership between Broxtowe Borough Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Beeston and District Civic Society and local young people.”

“It was great to see the enthusiasm of the children planting the trees and I am sure they all went away with a greater appreciation of the importance of looking after our natural world. The tree planting was originally planned for November last year, to coincide with national tree week, but the extremely heavy rain we experienced all through autumn made the ground too wet to work on.”

“Hopefully if we all work together to reduce emissions and plant trees to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere future generations will not have to deal with the extreme consequences of climate change.”
Amongst the trees were two saplings from the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest that were donated by the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds).

These were collected as acorns and grown on by children in Edwinstowe village. An additional sapling was taken to Gutersloh, Germany last summer and gifted to the local community as part Broxtowe’s twinning links with the town.

In terms of numbers of trees, this is the largest planting event in Broxtowe this year and as the trees grow, they will help capture and store carbon along with providing habitat for many species of birds, insects and small mammals.

The Council’s Green Futures campaign is a programme of projects which will be delivered to help the Borough become carbon neutral by 2027. For more information, visit www.broxtowe.gov.uk/greenfutures