CONTEXT 180 : JUNE 2024 17 WHERE HERITAGE AND NATURE MEET SIAN ATKINSON, LIAM PLUMMER and EMILY SLOAN Shaping the Northern Forest The project’s aim is to establish 50 million new trees over 25 years, inspiring those who live and work in the area, and recreating the cultural meaning and value of woodlands. The Northern Forest is a truly landscape-scale programme in northern England. Launched in 2018 to increase tree and woodland cover and for the management of existing woods, the area stretches from Liverpool to Hull, covering 10,000 square miles. The overall ambition is to establish at least 50 million new trees over 25 years across a landscape that currently has just 7.6 per cent woodland cover, notably lower than the England average of 10.1 per cent. The Northern Forest Partnership consists of the Woodland Trust and four community forests: the Mersey Forest, Greater Manchester’s City of Trees, the White Rose Forest and Humber Forest and the Community Forest Trust. We collaborate with a range of public, private and charitable partners to deliver this shared ambition. All UK landscapes are cultural, shaped through drivers ranging from the economics of agriculture and industry to the aesthetics of landscape design. The Northern Forest’s varied landscapes include the Mersey and Humber ports, rich in trading and manufacturing history, the mill town valleys of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, threaded with canals and waterways, the steel heartland of South Yorkshire and agricultural hinterlands from large-scale arable to upland hill farms. Our projects complement these local characteristics delivered by Northern Forest partners rooted in their communities, so that each project best suits local need. Trees and woodland are key structural components in past and present landscapes. The longevity of historic woods may simply reflect their value: ‘a wood that pays is a wood that stays’, as the saying goes. They may have survived or been planted for wood products: timber, firewood and charcoal. They were Bluebells in ancient woodland at Hackfall Wood, Masham (Photo: WTML/ Michelle Davis) The Northern Forest area
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