City of Trees, the community forest for Greater Manchester, is delighted to announce a new partnership with Together. The Cheadle-based property lender has made a generous donation of £100,000 to support tree planting in Stockport and across Greater Manchester.
To kick off the partnership, 40 members of Together staff spent two days planting over 400 trees at Penny Lane Fields, Stockport, to create a woodland area for the local community. 4,000 will be planted in total at the site.
Every tree planted will help to grow City of Trees and the larger Northern Forest that stretches from Liverpool to the Yorkshire coast. Staff at Together have planned more tree planting days over the next year.
Together’s £100,000 donation will support City of Trees’ mission to plant trees and improve Greater Manchester’s woodlands for the benefit of the people who live and work in the region. Once grown, the trees at Penny Lane Fields will lock in carbon and help to reduce flooding along the River Tame. The new woodland will effectively extend the nature reserve at Reddish Vale – boosting biodiversity. It also sits alongside the Trans Pennine Trail, a route for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.
In addition, City of Trees engages communities through its Citizen Forester volunteering programme, for people across Greater Manchester to join in tree planting.
“We are proud to call Greater Manchester home and are passionate about making our region even better, one tree at a time. Together’s donation is a fantastic step forward in being able to create a better, greener Stockport; to boost health and wellbeing and to help tackle the climate and biodiversity emergency. We’re really looking forward to welcoming the team from Together to our planting days, helping to achieve their target of planting thousands of trees in the borough and beyond.”
Alex Bedford, Fundraising Manager, City of Trees
As part of its sustainability strategy, the lender has committed to improving the local environment by creating a Together Forest and has already planted 858 trees as a lasting legacy for future generations.
“The work being carried out by City of Trees is incredibly important to both the community and the environment. “At Together, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, so being able to contribute towards a project that will not only mitigates flooding risks for local communities, but also boost biodiversity and helps towards greening the town centre is incredible for us.
We’re thrilled that our donation will support the planting of 4,000 trees in the Penny Lane Fields area and will also contribute to City of Tree’s wider tree planting programme across Greater Manchester”.
John Barker, Group Chief Officer at Together