How this started

For the past few years I've been buying up pot-grown Christmas trees from supermarkets etc which they were going to skip / send to landfill. This started just because I've always like trees and hated the thought of them being thrown away as just another bit of post-Christmas leftover. As I became more worried about the environment though this became more of my small way of offsetting my carbon footprint.

Recently it's become something of an obsession, primarily because I just hate the thought of trees being grown for four or five years only to end up as another commodity that's thrown away because no-one wanted it, with the added benefit of "doing my bit" for the environment. Most supermarkets reduce these trees to a few pounds in their Boxing Day sales and then throw away what doesn't sell, so my post-Christmas sales experience consists of going around buying up as many as I can. Some will have dried out too much to survive, but more than half are usually viable enough to plant out.

What I want to achieve

Which brings me to the reason for trying this out - space. I'm more than happy to carry on buying these trees up, but I ran out of places to plant them a while ago! Friends and family now have as many as they can take, and trees have started appearing overnight on bits of public land in my area, where there is no guarantee they'll survive long term.

My ambition, and the reason I'm asking for your support, is to buy an acre or two of land to start planting on. One acre can hold about 1000 trees - realistically it will be less as it's likely to be boggy land in the six thousand pound range I've targeted here, but that is enough to keep me going at the 20 or so trees per year I've been buying until now.

This is an attempt to both save trees that are destined for the skip and to do a small thing to help address climate change. 8 trees would offset a short-haul flight for one person, but only if the trees reach maturity. I'm therefore looking to find a bit of land that is of little interest for anything else, maybe the corner of some farmland that's difficult to access, or in an undesirable location near a motorway. Something that is unlikely to be disturbed, allowing the trees i plant to grow undisturbed.

The dream would be to appeal to the green conscience of supermarkets nationally and get them to ship their leftover trees to one place for planting rather than sending to landfill, and then to get more land to save more trees every year. For now though I thought I'd try this as a way of seeing what I can achieve locally. If it works and I raise enough for more than an acre I will go down that route and persuade them to send trees for planting every year.

That's it really, just a simple ambition but if you've read this far you probably like trees too and worry about the environment. By supporting me you'd be doing something that will make a difference to both. Thanks.