Our work – Towards a London Tree Ring

Creating a London Tree Ring is a 25 year vision. The outer ring pictured here will be complemented by greening of radial walking, wheeling and cycling routes.  Off this will be branches reaching right into the most green deprived neighbourhoods so everyone is better linked up to long green active travel routes and London’s countryside.

Our four key delivery mechanisms

1. Influencing local plans and strategies to include the creation of connected treescapes round the capital, along key radial walking, cycling and wheeling routes, and connecting the most green deprived communities up to these active travel routes and London’s countryside.
2. Supporting landowners helping them access relevant funding, volunteer help, and site specific  support on designing treescapes that maximise the benefit for people as well as the planet.
3. Mobilising community groups on planting, aftercare, rewilding and caring for existing wooded areas.
4. Getting more sites into community ownership or owned or managed by environmental bodies seeking land for planting trees or rewilding by finding sites for sale, or likely to come up for sale, in locations that could contribute to treescape connectivity.

What’s happened so far?

Research to learn lesson from urban woodland creation worldwide

Detailed research has been undertaken relating to urban woodland creation worldwide and the lessons to be learned from this. You can read the full report here or read the core recommendations in the executive summary here.

Creating and interactive map of woodland creation opportunity sites – feedback welcome!

We’ve worked in partnership with Greenspace Information for Greater London to create a map based on the best secondary data currently available showing opportunities for woodland creation.  See here and enter your postcode to find sites near you.  

Enhancing, verifying and ground truthing this information is key.  We are committed to right tree right place principles and local knowledge is vital to ensuring well designed growth of London’s treescapes.  If you have additional information about any of the sites marked as top opportunities for woodland creation (bright pink) and how tree canopy cover could be grown in a sensitive way, please do email woodlandcreation@cprelondon.org.uk.  Maybe woodland isn’t appropriate but an area of orchard, cherry trees or new hedgerows would be.  Please do let us know!

The Forestry Commission have been working with us on deeper research into the 100 top GiGL sites along the connectivity line (based on sites with indicators of suitability of 5+ on a scale of 1 to 6 and a size of 5ha+) using all the information to which the FC have access to identify issues needing consideration. These are the sites most likely to deliver opportunities for woodland creation at scale that will contribute to linking up existing treescapes – helping boost nature’s resilience to climate change.

We have also begun visiting sites on the ground with Woodland Savers as they work to identify potential opportunities for bringing more land into community ownership.

We are now working to identify how best to feed this information back to GiGL to enable them to further enhance London’s green space records.

Mapping a route for creating treescape connectivity round the capital – key to boosting nature’s resilience

Work has also been done by GiGL to show how existing areas of woodland could be linked via top opportunity sites to create a ring of connected treescapes around the capital.

In places, this outer ring crosses urban areas where more intensified street tree planting and the introduction of street parks could help create connectivity and a real a nature superhighway. 

See here for more on the methodology used and the proposed line of connectivity. The route may be varied to accommodate any barriers that are identified during the verification and ground truthing phase. 

Priorities include planting or natural regeneration where trees can help reduce the risks of flooding and enhance water quality, and where new community woodland could improve public access to quality green spaces.

Identification of specific sites for treescape creation

We now have:

• details of over 100 sites around London suitable for treescape creation identified by local communities
• around 100 sites along the potential Tree Ring route based on data from the Greenspace Information for Greater London (GiGL), including the strongest positive indicators for woodland creation and the largest size
• a list of ‘limbo London’ sites in poor condition edge of parks/ farmland/ sewage works and main roads including ex-landfill, gravel extraction sites and near sewage works where woodland creation could play a key role in landscape transformation

The community identified sites and sites based on GiGL data have been divided up between Trees for Cities and TCV for work on proactively approaching landowners and local groups offering support on growing the tree canopy in these areas.

We next plan to collate details of sites along walking and cycling routes that will connect the outer ring right to the centre of London and ensure the most green deprived areas are linked to these and London’s countryside.  

Progress on influencing plans and strategies

We have already got into the London Urban Forest Plan — 2025 Actions Update the better linking of Epping to Hainault Forest and from there on to Thames Chase Community Forest.  This is a priority segment of the London Tree Ring route – where we think there is good potential to make early progress.

Our work towards creating the London Tree Ring is very much a legacy project of the previous edition of the London Urban Forest Plan – and members of the steering group continue to be fully wedded to alignment with its latest iteration.

The Epping Forest Heritage Trust has also put growing the forest to support increased connectivity towards Hainault into their soon to be published strategic plan.

We have also been systematically feeding back on local plan consultations in outer London around growing London’s Urban Forest and increasing connectivity to link up wooded sites.  The next step will be doing something similar in response to local plan consultations in inner London – focusing particularly on encouraging tree planting along walking, cycling and wheeling routes.

The London Tree Ring Steering Group is meeting at least bi-monthly

The London Tree Ring Steering Group which includes the Woodland Trust, Trees for Cities, TCV, Woodland Savers, Greenspace Information for Greater London, Thames Chase Community Forest, the Forestry Commission, Forestry England and the GLA is meeting regularly.   The groups is currently focused primarily on developing a coordinated approach to engaging landowners and community groups in accelerating treescape creation around the outer ring where the biggest opportunities lie for largescale landscape transformation.

Demonstrator sites

Trees for Cities have planted their first London Tree Ring site with support from The Bupa Foundation – see Contributing towards the London Tree Ring at Hainault Recreation Ground.

TCV are in active discussions about undertaking their first London Tree Ring planting.

These early sites are key for building momentum!

Woodland Savers are committed to working with local community groups to bring 20 to 200 ha of land into community ownership by supporting communities to crowdfund with match giving and providing help on ongoing land management.  They hope to get a first site over the line in 2025!  Contributions to the matching pot are needed.

We are also submitting potential sites to Forestry England which has budget for both purchasing and long-term leasing of sites and again hope to see one of these over the line in 2025.

Recruiting first London Tree Ring Director

The progress to date has been made despite this work being done on a shoe string with minimal resource – largely powered by volunteers.  We are now in the process of recruiting the first London Tree Ring Director to help take this project to the next level and bring in the funds needed to further build the momentum to deliver large scale growth in London’s urban forest so urgently needed in the face of the combined climate and nature crises.  We’ve had some fantastic candidates so hope to appoint very soon!  This role is currently funded part time for 3 days a week but we would love to upgrade it to full time or buy in extra support from a London Tree Ring Officer.  If you think you can help please email anna@cprelondon.org.uk

Find out more about how you can get involved here