New 460 acre 'Jubilee' forest to be created in UK's East Midlands

Woodland Trust plans to create a 460-acre flagship wood for Queen's Jubilee

September 2011: The Woodland Trust has unveiled plans to create a vast 460-acre publicly-accessible flagship wood as a national symbol to celebrate The Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

GROWING AMBITION: The Woodland Trust want to transform this site in Leicester with a flagship tree-planting project to mark the Queen's jubilee

The trust hopes the ambitious project will give people across the UK access to the wonders of woodland, while creating a natural historical monument that will enable wildlife to thrive. The flagship woodland will be created as the pinnacle of the trust's biggest ever tree-planting campaign: Jubilee Woods, which will see the planting of six million trees to create hundreds of new woods UK wide.

'We are the least wooded country in Europe'
Located in the heart of The National Forest in Leicestershire, the Diamond Wood will offer easy access for ten million people, create valuable new habitat for the nation's best-loved species and become the largest continuous block of woodland owned by a single organisation in The National Forest.

The trust has launched a £3.3 million fundraising appeal to acquire the site. Diamond Wood will create a living legacy for The Queen's Diamond Jubilee and add to the trust's commitment to double native woodland cover by 2050.

Sue Holden, chief executive of the Woodland Trust, said: ‘We need help to create woodland for the nation, to give everyone access to the beauty of the natural world and create a legacy for the Queen's Jubilee.

Fantastic for country's wildlife
‘It's a chance to celebrate the reign of one of our best-loved and longest-reigning monarchs while educating people about the need to increase woodland cover in the UK. We are one of the least wooded countries in Europe so there's an urgent need for more trees to help double native woodland cover in the UK. We need people's help to make this wood a reality through donations and pledges of support.'

The trust has received generous support from The National Forest Company and chairman Catherine Graham-Harrison said: ‘The National Forest is the country's most ambitious project to transform a landscape through planting trees and creating other wildlife-friendly habitats, so it is fitting that such prestigious woodland, led by the country's best-known woodland charity, should take root here.'

Carbon lock-up potential is enormous
As it grows, the wood will attract wildlife such as the yellowhammer and marsh tit from neighbouring areas, helping reverse the decline of other species and protecting the adjacent ancient woodland and its flourishing ground flora. While the site's open land will attract skylarks and starlings, dunnocks and bullfinches, other insects and butterflies can be found along the woodland edges and along the ancient hedgerows.

The planting scheme will be making Britain greener in more ways than one - as well as the beauty of the trees themselves, they will reduce the impact of pollution; the carbon lock-up potential from six million trees is roughly equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide output of a million cars.