Woodlands Trust donates 420 trees to Yorkshire club

The UK’s largest conservation charity has agreed to donate more than 400 trees to a nine-hole golf club in Yorkshire.

Hanging Heaton Golf Club says its request for the trees was initially denied but the charity had a change of heart after talking to the club’s greens’ chair, Ian Kilburn.

The club contacted the charity after a number of 50-year-old trees needed to be cut down due to safety measures, leaving space across the course.

Kilburn  said: “I thought we could support the environment a little bit so I wrote to the Woodlands Trust saying we want to help the environment and put some trees back into this world and they basically said no, you can’t have any of our nice trees.

“I wasn’t prepared to give in, so I said we’re involving communities, schools, ladies groups, volunteers coming in to help plant them; I told them we’ll take lots of photographs and you can promote them on your website.

“They said, ‘Congratulations Mr Kilburn, you have won your trees!’ They came at the start of November and we have already planted 300 of the 420.

“We have bought another 300 hawthorne trees for hedge wildlife, birds, hedgehogs and rabbits who can all live in hedges on the perimeter of the course and it will give more character to the course.

“It’s good for the community to support these projects and, hopefully, the Woodlands Trust will say, ‘Yes, you did a great job for us last year, here are another 120 trees, when do you want them?’

“I want to build a good relationship with them. It’s networking and doing something which I think is good for the environment.

“All you hear about is COP27 and the depleting Arctic Circle and Antarctic Circle and global warming and floods. If we can do our little bit from our little club to try and repair that, then great. We want to improve the ecology. We are a friendly little club and we want to grow and be part of the community.

“The oak trees that we’ve put in – as sturdy as the oak, I think the phrase used to be – will live to around 500 years. They will grow from little acorns and by the time they become big I’ll be long gone!”