Warwickshire tree planter hopes for community woodland backing

A man who runs a tree-planting company is hoping to secure backing to create a community woodland of 10,000 trees.

Dan Whiteman, of Harbury, Warwickshire, who said he wants to boost biodiversity, works with a team of volunteers to plant and maintain trees.

Organisations pay him to plant trees, and he puts all the money towards that without taking a salary.

So far he has raised money to plant more than 100,000 trees worldwide and planted over 10,000 in the UK.

Asked where his initiative started, Mr Whiteman said he wanted "to do the right thing" and it "kind of ballooned from there".

He started planting trees for his business and clients heard about what he was doing and wanted to do something similar.

"So I basically opened it up and created a service where companies or people can even pay me to plant trees," he said.

Mr Whiteman, from tree-planting service OblongTrees, said he felt it was "important to do something" and "try and make a change".

He stated: "If I can't change how much fuel a jet plane uses... I can plant trees. So I've done something that I believe is making a difference."

Mr Whiteman is currently looking for a space to put 10,000 trees.

He said: "I have the backing to create a community woodland, ideally in Warwickshire, where we'll hopefully just tick all the right boxes.

"We'll put in native trees, hopefully hectares of native trees. We'll put in a space for wildflowers where possible. We'll get beekeepers on site if we can.

"We'll put bird boxes up. We'll do everything right for biodiversity, for the environment just to create kind of a rich pocket of countryside somewhere."

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