A partnership between Burnley Leisure and Culture and Burnley Borough Council has helped to secure funding through Trees for Cities, enabling us to plant 7,500 trees across the borough during the tree planting season between November 2023 – March 2024.
Beat the Street was brought to the borough in Summer 2023 through a local partnership including, Together an Active Future, Burnley Borough Council, NHS Primary Care Networks, Canal and River Trust and other partners. It was supported by the National Lottery through Sport England and delivered by Intelligent Health. This activity turns towns into a giant game where points could be earned to win prizes and discover more about the area by walking, running, and cycling. Those who took part turned the points they earned into trees for their teams (schools, work places, sports teams), and had the opportunity to plant them as part of this tree planting initiative.
The 15 planting sites can be viewed on an interactive map by following this link or a pdf is available to view and download here.
Pennine Lancashire Treescapes Project Recap
Back in early 2022 the Pennine Lancashire Treescapes project (PLanT) planted 35,000 trees, creating 95 new micro woodlands across Pennine Lancashire.
PLanT was a partnership between Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale Councils, the Ribble Rivers Trust and Prospects Foundation and was supported by £160,000 from the Forestry Commission and £11,000 from Trees for Cities.
Here in Burnley, we planted 45 new woodlands with 16,000 native woodland trees and created 5 new community orchards. Community planting days were arranged to help plant the trees with the help of volunteers and greenspaces staff.
The Ribble Rivers Trust helped children from primary schools in Burnley to plant woodland and orchard trees in their school grounds. The children took part in a series of educational activities to learn about the importance of trees for the environment, wildlife and people, as well as what their trees need in order to survive, before planting trees in their school grounds.
All the woodlands trees were planted in public greenspaces and, in addition to the visual benefits, the trees will also help to reduce the impacts of air pollution and risk of flooding, absorb carbon dioxide, improve river water quality, and create new wildlife habitats.