Welcome to the
Herefordshire
Tree Forum

The London Tree Officers Association (LTOA) said trees were being felled across the country because councils were afraid of being liable for expensive property repairs.

Councils in England have given permission to fell more than 1,000 trees which previously had Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs).

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Spokesperson said applications to address tree-related subsidence damage must be supported by appropriate information, with other factors eliminated as far as possible.

The BBC analysed 143 Freedom of Information request responses from councils in England. Of those, 10 directly provided figures for the financial years between 2019 and 2024, showing permission was granted to fell 1,403 previously protected trees.

Full story can be found HERE.

Funded by £607,000 from National Highways, the National Trust aims to rejuvenate 65 hectares of The Weir Garden in Herefordshire. Thousands of trees, plants, and seeds have been planted to create diverse habitats for wildlife, such as orchards, woodlands, meadows, hedgerows, and wood pasture.

The project is part of the National Trust's broader strategy to restore nature across the country which includes restoring over 65 hectares of priority habitat at The Weir Garden, an area that spans four hectares alongside the River Wye. The work will help create a mosaic of diverse habitats for wildlife within the 100-hectare Weir Estate. The National Trust will now manage the ongoing restoration, including livestock grazing and a hay cutting regime, to ensure the landscape remains resilient to climate change.

Read more about NT's work in the county HERE.

A new 21-mile road between Cambridge and Huntingdon cost £1.5bn and was opened in 2020 to fulfil a familiar political desire: growth. One of Britain’s biggest infrastructure projects of the past decade, it was approved by the secretary of state for transport over the heads of locally elected councillors.

National Highways, the government-owned company that builds and maintains England’s A roads, promised that the biodiversity net gain from the construction project would be 11.5%; in other words, they pledged the natural environment would be left in a considerably better state after the road was built than before. To achieve this some 860,000 trees were planted.

Five years later, nearly all of those trees have died. So much for Biodiversity Net Gain...

Read the full article HERE.

The Native Black Poplar is one of our rarest native trees and as part of the work to re-establish it as a familar sight in the countyside, over 2000 plants and cuttings have been made avaialble to over 120 parishes throughout Herefordshire and beyond. In addition, to help to promote genetic diversity and create greater resilience for the species, a 'clone bank' of young trees has been planted at Oak Tree Farm. Grown from cuttings (or 'truncheons'), these represent the nine genetic types so far found amongst the surviving trees in Herefordshire. These include 2 of only 5 female trees found in the County; one of these was found to be genetically unique, being THAT close to extinction!This valuable resource has created interest from neighbouring counties, which may well be able to contribute more individuals to further widen the available genetic pool.

For more information about the Black Poplar Project, CLICK HERE
AND - The National Trust follows our lead! CLICK HERE

The Old Oak of Ross is probably one of the oldest oaks in the county, which makes it one of the oldest trees in Europe. It has survived for perhaps 900 years but over the past ten years or so its condition has declined. The image on the right, taken May 2025, shows the Old Oak to the right of a much larger tree which, however, only dates from the 1920s. it can be seen that the section on the right appears to be dead although the left-hand part of the crown still bears green foliage. The reasons for the relatively sudden decline of the tree are uncertain but may be the result of the inundation by polluted water from the river Wye or perhaps as a result of historical agricultural practices. It can be seen that an agricultural exclusion zone has now been established around both the Old Oak and its younger neighbour.

Benhall Farm, within which the tree is situated, is tenanted, being part of the 13,000 acres that forms the Duchy of Cornwall's Herefordshire Estate. The duchy has been approached with the aim of initiating a programme of research to determine the cause of the decline and to put work in hand to improve the tree's growing conditions with the aim of halting and perhaps reversing the tree's deterioration. A grant application to fund these works has been presented under the 'Farming in Protected Landscapes' (FiPL) scheme. Th e proposal is to be considered and, it is hoped, approved in mid June.

An illustrated history of the tree describing its decline and discussing the possible causes is available HERE.