Farmers in the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park show how it's possible to turn marginal land land into profitable assets that deliver for nature.
Stump Up for Trees is a very small, community-based, ground up, farmer-facing charity, engaged in trying to plant one million trees in the Brecon Beacons area for ecological restoration of upland landscapes. So what's critical for us is that we engage with the landowning community. We think that the landscape can be improved with farmers staying here. So what we don't want to see is farmers selling their entire farms for woodland creation.
What we want them to do is repurpose a percentage of their land for woodland creation, whether that's through agroforestry or native woodland creation on their very marginal land. So what we've been doing today with our amazing team of volunteers is tree maintenance, and on bracken sites where you've planted trees, what that basically means is removing the bracken from around the saplings to ensure that they get good growth and to ensure that the volume of bracken is not there in the autumn and winter, when the bracken dies back and it doesn't fall on top of the trees and snuff them out basically.
I really like to be involved because, you know, I like trees, I like nature, that sort of thing. But feel also like it's a good cause to give your time to make all this happen. And yeah, it's all about, you know, doing something for the environment but also, you know, having a good time with good people.
The Woodland Trust have been supporting us in multiple different ways right from the beginning. So when we had the idea to plant on Bryn Arw, even before we planted a tree, the Woodland Trust came to us and said, we think it would be really valuable if you conducted some baseline ecological surveys and they provided the funding for us to do that, which is terrific.
They also supplied us with some trees in order to conduct some experiments in planting on the bracken. And they also lent us their expertise and knowledge, which is incredibly valuable because we were pretty green at the beginning.
Coed Cadw have been amazing in helping us get set up, providing the trees to sort of start us off at the nursery and we grow them on and get them outside and planted, where they live forever! We're just getting to the point where landowners and farmers in particular are coming to us because we work really closely with them to make sure that the ecological restoration that we're doing through tree planting is working with them and it works in their landscape.
What we're seeing is this real shift in how people are approaching how important trees are, and how those trees can not only fit into the landscape, but actually enhance and improve what's there and bring this landscape to its full potential. And it's led by the community. And how can you not be excited by that? It's great to see.
Stump Up For Trees is an ambitious, community-based charity focused on woodland creation, enhancing biodiversity and safeguarding farming livelihoods in the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) area of south-east Wales.
In 2017, Keith Powell, a seventh generation Black Mountains Farmer, initiated the project and set about planting 135,000 native broadleaf trees on unproductive, bracken-covered common land on Bryn Arw.
In recent years, there has been a surge of large corporate companies buying up farmland in Wales for afforestation and carbon offsetting. But giving up on this land isn't the only option available to farmers.
This is where Stump Up for Trees comes in. Keith's charity aims to give farmers and other landowners a choice: to keep their family farm in hand, and make a small economic return by re-purposing their marginal agricultural land to native woodland creation or wood pasture with grant funding.
When Stump Up for Trees got in touch with our team at Coed Cadw (the Woodland Trust in Wales) about their project to plant native broadleaf trees on the banks of Bryn Arw, we couldn't say no. We were on-hand to provide:
restored through natural regeneration
planted with native broadleaf trees
trees supplied by the Woodland Trust
After contributing to a detailed site assessment, our experts helped Stump Up for Trees to revise the initial plans for its flagship project. The final design incorporated a mixture of woodland restoration and creation techniques to nurture a wildlife-rich mosaic of habitats, including:
Daw eto ddail ar fryn / There will be leaves on the mountain again
Credit: Robert Read / WTML
We helped with the cost of initial bracken mulching to prepare the hillside for planting. We also contributed more than 30,000 downy birch, sessile oak and rowan trees of local provenance to encourage a trial of larger trees than usually planted, which are likely to require less bracken weeding.
Credit: John Bridges / WTML
We also commissioned baseline surveys of flora, birds, moths and butterflies along transects through the planting area, plus adjoining habitats including ancient woodland and acid grassland.
Credit: Rob Penn
Monitoring the site into the future is essential to its progress. This is why the specialist surveyors went on to train Stump Up for Trees volunteers in how to conduct bird, butterfly and flora surveys. More than 30 volunteers now have the skills to record the changes to biodiversity that are taking place inside and outside the plant site on Bryn Arw over years to come.
The bracken-filled common land at Bryn Arwr has been transformed.
We can't wait to see what the coming years bring for Bryn Arw and Stump Up for Trees.
The baseline data from our species surveys has given the team a crucial marker from which to monitor success, and with more than 30 volunteers now trained in survey skills, each year they can do this monitoring themselves.
The hard work isn't over – we'll continue working with Stump Up for Trees to help the charity get more trees in the ground over the coming years.
With our encouragement and support, Stump up for Trees is now able to start up its own tree nursery. This is vitally important, as home-grown native trees help to reduce the spread of tree pests and diseases and are more resilient to local conditions.
If you're interested in planting trees on land you manage or own, we can provide trees, funding and expert advice.
If you’re looking to plant lots of trees, we have the trees, grants and funding schemes to help.
Find out more
About us
We're standing up for trees in Wales and demanding better protection for our natural heritage.
Protecting trees and woods
Hedges and Edges, a form of agroforestry, could help tackle the biodiversity and climate crisis if adopted by Wales' future sustainable farming scheme.
