Series 2 Episode 4 - Alwyn’s Forest of Flowers

Tree Amble

Wild Flowers / Climate / Wellbeing / Tree Planting: One of Tree Amble's favourite projects is Forest of Flowers [FOF] - this is where we take ex arable soils in very poor condition, deep plough them, broadcast wildflower seed and then plant trees. The idea came from Denmark and their forestry creation work but was interpreted by the great folks at Landlife and given a new life as a way to provide suitable wildflower seed beds using the same principle - reduce surface fertility by inverting the top layers of soil potentially to 1m in depth. We have pinned this on one stage by adding in trees to the mix.

Many people are now very and rightly concerned about ploughing and its ability to impoverish soils, release carbon, open soil up to erosion. Many more are concerned that we should not be ploughing and planting arable soils upon which we could grow food. But this approach will only ever operate on a few small sites and the monitoring we have carried out on these few sites suggest that [as a one off operation] the carbon release is rapidly compensated for by sequestration and the boost to biodiversity is off the scale.

Alwyn's site in Yorkshire - which we visit in this episode - was restored only in 2015 and 2016 and is now one of the best butterfly sites in Yorkshire. This is creative conservation at its best!