Tree planting has begun on the Ernest Cook Trust's Slimbridge Estate, creating Gloucestershire's first 'Diamond Woods' to celebrate Her Majesty the Queen's 60th year on the throne.
Ernest Cook Trust plants Diamond Wood
Tree planting has begun on the Ernest Cook Trust’s Slimbridge Estate, creating Gloucestershire’s first ‘Diamond Woods’ to celebrate Her Majesty the Queen’s 60th year on the throne.
Thirteen acres of new woodland are being created on the Slimbridge Estate, near Berkeley. The areas will form part of 60 acres of new woods, with around 25,000 trees being planted on the Ernest Cook Trust’s estates nationally.
The education charity is among the UK’s top landowners – and the only one in Gloucestershire – selected to plant 60-acre Diamond Woods under the Woodland Trust’s Jubilee Woods project.
The tree planting is a Diamond Jubilee double for the Ernest Cook Trust. The Trust was founded in 1952 by philanthropist Ernest Cook, a grandson of the travel company founder Thomas Cook.
Planting is going ahead despite the Chalara ash dieback outbreak – plans for all the Trust’s new woodlands had to be re-designed without ash trees.
On Monday, December 17, pupils from Manorbrook Primary School, Thornbury, planted the first hardwood trees at one of the new woodland sites, at the Trust’s Redwood Education Centre, on the Slimbridge Estate.
Over the coming weeks around 5,500 new trees will be planted at Slimbridge. New woodlands are also being planted on the Trust’s other Gloucestershire estates at Fairford, Hatherop and Barnsley – creating over 34 acres of new woodland in the county – over 14,000 new trees.
Tree varieties to be planted include a mix of beech, hornbeam and oak, as well as woodland shrubs such as hazel and hawthorn. Some of the new oaks to be planted on ECT’s estates will be grown from acorns from ancient trees in Windsor Great Park.
The Ernest Cook Trust’s Director Nicholas Ford says, “We are very privileged to have been chosen among the country’s major landowners to create prestigious Diamond Woods. These new woodlands will be of major benefit to future generations of children who will visit our estates to learn from the land.”
The Ernest Cook Trust owns and manages over 22,000 acres of country estates in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Leicestershire, Dorset and Buckinghamshire. The Trust also runs free countryside education programmes for schools – last year 20,000 children visited its estates.
And it donates �1.6m a year to help cultivate children’s interest in the countryside and the arts, investing in traditional skills and helping to raise standards in reading, writing and maths.
For more information on the Woodland Trust’s Jubilee Woods Project visit http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/jubilee-woods/about/Pages/our-aims.aspx#.UMmw62_G_JY
Pictured L to R: Manorbrook Primary School pupils Sebby, Lauren, Jesse, Melanie and Joe plant the first Diamond Wood trees at the Ernest Cook Trust's Slimbridge Estate.
