00:00I'm Louise Gibson and I work for Leeds City Council as a Countryside Ranger.
00:04We're at Western Flats Park today doing some planting as part of our woodland creation scheme
00:09in Leeds. So these are volunteers from local community who've come out to help us with tree
00:15planting. We are planting small areas of woodland to try and help improve in terms of habitat but
00:22also to help mitigate with climate change. As the trees grow they lock in the carbon and help to
00:30reduce the amount of excess carbon that we've got in the atmosphere. We have sessions all through
00:34the winter of tree planting and it's the best time because it gives the trees time to set root for the
00:38spring and summer and we're also trialing today doing mulch mats instead of spraying them across
00:44the season so that we're using less herbicide and they're made of wool so that they're organic and
00:49kind of rot away over time. We've had a really good uptake with volunteer groups, we've had members
00:54of the public coming, we've also had corporate volunteers and some of our regular roaming groups
01:00have come out to do things as well as some of the friends of groups. I've lived around here for a
01:04long time now, I've made it my home, been always part of West Leeds so it's great to see these green
01:10spaces across the city but in particular this you know this area is really really proud of it but it
01:17does need a lot of a lot of upkeep. There used to be a permanent gardener associated with the park
01:22but I think you've got about one per eight parks if not more these days so it's very very difficult
01:28for them so we try to fill in that gap. We've got a great bunch of people that work on the committee
01:33trying to do events for it and around the local community we have some great people who will come
01:38out and help when we when we do events like this tree planting but also the Rose Garden which is further
01:43up the park. It's really nice to be able to go back to sites where I've worked in because I roam around
01:50go back to sites and see some of the things that I've created and some of the volunteers have created
01:55still being in place and still being helpful to people we do all kinds of things not just planting
02:00trees helping with constructing footpaths with fences. This area is really boggy there's a natural
02:08spring that runs down from the top so if you get really wet weather it sort of you can see sometimes
02:13rivers coming down the side they've done quite a bit of work to try and tidy it up but it was really
02:17important for this area to get something in there to soak that water up. As a countryside ranger team
02:22we all kind of like to be outside and like to kind of connect communities to spaces and enhance those
02:27spaces for the public and wildlife as well and that's something that we get to see a lot as we go
02:32through the years through tree planting because there's trees that have been planted in 2020 from the
02:36beginning of this project and then you see now five years later a lot of those woodlands have come
02:39a lot further and it's just nice to see how they develop and how you see more wildlife in those
02:44areas and see people use the areas more. Green space is so important to us all it's great for your
02:49mental health just having a walk around you'll see lots of people walking around particularly dog
02:53walkers of course but everyone you know running through the park you know we need to see more of
02:58this don't we it's better for our health
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