Combatting flooding and soil erosion with trees

My name is Rachael Spence, and I live here in rural Leicestershire. I've lived here for just over sixteen years and I have seventeen acres of my own land that I use for grazing and I look after just over a hundred acres which we also use for grazing and for growing grass as a crop.

The MoreWoods scheme from the Woodland Trust was mentioned to me by a few friends and then when I looked into it, the advice and help that you guys offer was what made me choose you guys to help me with the choice of trees and what I wanted to do in this area here.

It was very simple, it was a very easy process to apply. Once my application was in, within two months the Woodland Trust representative came out to see me which was a huge help because I didn't know what variety of trees to plant or what to go for.

But I did have quite a specific need with the erosion that we have and they were brilliant, really helpful. In the last five years, I've noticed a huge change in the weather and the amount of rainfall that falls and which has created quite a few problems as you can see here. So we have had no choice but to make the pond, which was sort of a damp area, larger hoping that would help with the amount of rainfall that we receive and I think the final touch to it is the planting of trees, which the roots will help hold the soil together and hopefully reduce some of the soil erosion but also the amount of nutrients that end up going into our river systems.

So, with the help of the advisor that came out from the Woodland Trust, we decided on planting out one hectare, which equated to 750 trees and 250 shrubs, which were delivered brilliantly, the packaging was great, nothing was at all damaged, and yeah we're very excited about planting them today.