Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group were joined by the West Wittering Allotment Association to welcome visitors to the West Wittering Tree Nursery Open Morning on Friday 3rd December. The impressive turnout included allotment holders, regular MWHG volunteers, parish councillors, local school teachers, and plenty of new faces from the local community all keen to learn more about growing native trees to help wildlife and combat climate change – and enjoy the hot drinks and delicious cakes of course!
The tree nursery has been created on a strip of land at the Ellanore Lane allotments, that the West Wittering Parish Council kindly gave the group permission to use. Awesome Alex Ainge and an amazing team of volunteers worked hard over the summer months to get the tree nursery ready, clearing brambles, building raised beds, and laying down weed membrane. There are plenty of locally-sourced tree seeds that have been picked, processed and prepared, and we are eagerly waiting for them to germinate*.
In the meantime, we sourced approx. 2,000 young trees for the tree nursery and some wonderful volunteers helped to plant them into the raised beds during the Open Morning event. There were 14 different native species in the delivery including English Oak, Rowan, Beech, Dog Rose, Field Maple, and Silver Birch, all of which provide food and habitat for native wildlife, and – of course – absorb carbon. These young trees will only spend a short time in the nursery as they will soon be planted out in the local area.
If you are interested in volunteering to help out at the tree nursery, please do get in touch. We need help with tasks such as weeding, watering, potting on, and maintenance during the Spring and Summer, as well collecting tree seeds and processing them during the late-Summer and Autumn months. If you think you might be able to provide a home to some of our trees on your land then we’d be very interested to hear from you.
You can contact us through our contact form.
Project made possible by the generous support of Hendy, The Woodger Trust and West Wittering PC.
*The long term goal is to grow trees from locally-sourced trees and plant them in the local area. Native trees grown from locally wild-collected seed and grown locally are more likely to be adapted to local conditions, such as soil type and climate. On the Manhood Peninsula local trees that are growing well are adapted to the clay soils, wet winters, dry summers, salt-laden winds, and coastal conditions and so it is likely that they will pass these adaptations onto their offspring.
