Phil Stallard, Mid Wales Landscape Scheme

Hi, I'm Phillip Stallard and we're at Dol Llys Farm which hosts my project the mid Wales landscape scheme which is um a tree planting scheme – free tree planting scheme – run by me on behalf of the Woodland Trust. We've just been disseminating 5000 trees now in the last couple of days to 42 different landowners, er some of which have had two or three trees and some of which have had two or three hundred trees. These are native trees – they're supplied by the Woodland Trust Cymru – so we've got two different types of oak, two different types of birch, hazel, lots of other native species which are great for wildlife and also really good for shelter and what have you for livestock on farms.

To add in hedges and just standard trees as well reduces the amount of runoff and allows more water to soak into the ground. That in turn then stops the rivers flooding quite so badly and we've seen some really serious erosion of soil now if especially if it's just been ploughed and gets a heavy deluge of rain. It'll take tonnes of soil off and they're left with the fields with much less topsoil.

The livestock needs shelter it needs shade – you've only got to look at a field on a hot day and the sheep will all be underneath the one tree that's remaining, but those trees are three or four hundred years old and there's nothing coming up behind them. So, there's examples on this farm at Dol Llys and others where they're putting in more standard trees in the middle of fields now to cast that shade because once the once three- or four-hundred-year-old tree is gone there's nothing there except the hedgerows and then all the livestock will be tucked in under that looking for shade.

For me it's as much about the conversation as it is about the trees, to get people thinking about the issues of
climate change, uh carbon sequestering, biodiversity loss, making room for nature – and then they come along, and they're delighted, really delighted, to have free trees and get out there and you know it's like a bit of a big happy family of tree planters out there now.