Get involved with the Saving Devon's Treescapes Project – Free Trees and School Visits

Our free trees hubs are up and running for the 2024-2025 planting season. If you’re a community group, parish council, school or business that are interested in hosting a free tree hub during the 2024-25 season then please drop an email to Michael at mrogers@devonwildlifetrust.org. If you’re a landowner wanting 50+ trees then please complete this form and our advisor will be in touch: https://forms.office.com/r/shgpiAap4i

Our free tree hubs offer free trees (whips) for planting in private gardens or any land where you have permission. We give these away at local distribution hubs during winter months where you can collect between 1-5 free cell grown trees, a planting guide and tree protection. Each hub will have between 200-400 trees to give away and will be run by local volunteers. All trees available are UK native species such as Oak, Rowan and Crab Apple.

If you are part of a community or voluntary group, an education group (including primary and secondary schools), a parish or town council, you can apply for up to 30 free orchard trees for your community or for a free kit to set up your own micro-nursery. 

Find out more about community orchards here

Find out more about setting up a micro-nursery here

We are working with schools across the county to plant new trees and engage children in education around treescapes. We can offer different things depending on your school’s capacity:

1. Free tree packs: up to 45 saplings to plant or to distribute for pupils to plant at home. If you’re looking for more trees then get in touch and we’ll what we can do
2. Micro-nurseries: we can support you with materials and guidance to set up your own tree nursery to grow trees.
3. Education: the DWT schools team can come in and engage your students in some outdoor learning focused around trees. Or we can provide lesson plans and idea for you to deliver yourselves.

If you’re interested please contact Sarah at saugbaya@devonwildlifetrust.org.

Our Northern Devon Natural Solutions project, in conjunction with the Woodland Trust, has a free tree offer open community groups who can receive up to 1200 trees (equivalent to 100m of new hedge planting or 0.5ha of woodland creation).

The trees will come with spiral guards and bamboo canes – everything you need to get your trees up and away. You can use the trees to create, extend or restore woodlands or hedges or they could also be used for in-field trees/agroforestry. Communities need to be from Northern Devon. You can find more information in the pdf below.