Tree planting at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal on Sunday 6th December 2020

Twelve of us were back at Quarry Bank Mill, planting trees in zone 3. The area above where we planted before.

There were 1,200 whips of various types to be planted in "islands". Each island will be surrounded by wide paths of wildflower meadow. The islands will act as a bridge between the meadow and Wood we planted on previous workdays. Providing habit for many insects and small mammals and somewhere for owls to roost and hunt.

The centre of the islands were tall species like Wild service, crab apple, wild cherry, Hazel.  Then a variety of native species, like Gelder Rose and elder. Then spiky plants were put round the edge, e.g Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Gorse, Holly. To keep people and large animals out.

The hard bit was making them an irregular shape it was so tempting to fill the gaps and make it round.

Working hard we managed to plant all 1200 trees before we left.  I'll have to pop back in years to come to check on "glove island". 

Text and some photo's from Jenny, additional photo's provided by Jean and Adrian.

Note from Sue: we had a 'small' distraction during our workday, in the shape of Ribble, Colin the Ranger's 8 week old pup. Both Colin and Ribble had been on Countryfile the previous week when Colin was explaining about the tree project at Styal.