Suffolk Wildlife Trust Archives - Made by the Forge BlogMade by the Forge Blog

30 April

Donated trees Planted at Carlton Marshes

Written by Juliet Fishenden

Our personal and business ethos is self-sufficiency, caring for our planet and one of the ways we give back is to plant trees. What makes the company unique is its pledge to plant a tree for every order received. We make sure that what the company takes from the Suffolk environment, it puts back into the Suffolk environment.

Donated Trees Planted at Carlton Marshes

Just before the lockdown, we were extremely fortunate to check in with Suffolk Wildlife Trust, specifically Carlton Marshes, their flagship nature reserve situated on the south west edge of Lowestoft.

How many trees planted?

What we didn’t know until we arrived was just how many trees you, our customers, have enabled the trust to plant. Michael Strand, Community Fundraising Manager, said that “…as part of the restoration work to create a 1000 acre wild destination area, the Trust is providing new access opportunities for visitors in and around the new visitor centre. This includes landscaping a corridor of native trees and shrubs to help safely guide people towards the centre who enter the reserve by foot and to act as a scrubby wildlife corridor along the fringes of the wild play area and car park.”

Tree Species Planted

Species planted in the fields of Carlton Piece and Burnt Hill by volunteer teams from Essex & Suffolk Water and Suffolk County Council late last year include hawthorn, blackthorn, dog rose, spindle, hazel and guelder-rose. Thanks to Made by the Forge’s customers, Suffolk Wildlife Trust has planted approximately 1800 trees at Carlton Marshes Nature Reserve. 1800! Pat yourselves on the back, everybody.

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14 April

Tree Planting in 2019 – Giving Back

Written by Juliet Fishenden

As you probably know, Made by the Forge pledges to plant a tree for every order received. We take this pledge very seriously. In February this year, hundreds of trees were planted thanks to all you wonderful people who ordered ironwork from us last year. The funds to do so were recently donated to the Suffolk Wildlife Trust for landscape trees to be planted around the development at Carlton Marshes Visitor Centre, car park and children’s play area.

Carlton and Oulton Marshes range over a one hundred and fifty hectare nature reserve in Lowestoft. They are collectively a lowland reserve in the Broads National Park. This consists of meadows, wet grasslands, reed beds, marshes and woodlands. We chose to support the planned tree planting needed at Carlton Marshes to help the Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s overall goal to make this reserve a very special place for wildlife and people. The volunteer team is putting in one exterior rabbit fence using chestnut posts and the trees are scattered within.

The Suffolk Wildlife Trust arranged the tree planting at Carlton Marshes, which will go some way towards this amazing location becoming an even more special place to visit. The marshes are open to anyone who wants a wild, outdoor experience. And who doesn’t?

The images were kindly supplied by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. “Thank you once again for your terrific support” Michael Strand, Suffolk Wildlife Trust.

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05 February

Alexandra Park, Ipswich – Tree Planting

Written by Juliet Fishenden

Another fun day out with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust and some hardy volunteers – or rather that was the plan. It was Saturday 27th January 2018. The Trust’s Education Officer Lucy Shepherd had organised a Tree Planting Event in Alexandra Park, Ipswich, Suffolk which Made by the Forge had sponsored. There was an open invitation to families to come along and help plant the trees to improve and enhance the park. There was another park that scuppered my attempts to be there on time to help and take some photos.

Portman Road is the home of Ipswich’s football club and they were playing Wolves there that afternoon. And if any of you know what it’s like travelling through football traffic, you’ll understand that by the time I’d got to my destination, all the planting was complete. My belated apologies to Lucy for not quite making it. And Ipswich lost, 1-0… Lucy and the team of volunteers managed to plant 250 trees in about 3 hours. That’s about one and a half trees a minute!

Lucy said it was “A massive community effort with about 40 people attending to come and help. It was such a lovely day with people popping by who couldn’t plant trees but who just wanted to see what we were doing…. Some wildflower seed was also planted near the trees and this will be such a lovely area for wildlife when it has all been established.”

Lucy was very grateful for our support because it gave the Suffolk Wildlife Trust the opportunity to plant much needed trees in the park. I’m sure the pictures speak for themselves. There’s something enormously refreshing about young people doing things that involve no screens or computer code although I am well aware of the irony saying that in a blog…

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02 January

Tree Planting with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust

Written by Juliet Fishenden

As you probably know, for every order, Made by the Forge pledges to plant a tree to give back to nature what we’re taking from it. We assign this important part of our business to the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. Rather than plant one tree at a time, we let the Trust choose the best location and then on a certain day, volunteers who care about the environment come along and plant hundreds of trees at once.

We are indebted to Michael Strand the Trust’s Development Officer whom we meet usually every year at tree plantings. Alas both he and Site Manager Alan Miller were not available for this years’ plantings but there as the Trust representative was Sam Hanks, the Coastal Reserves Assistant and it was a pleasure to meet him.

While at Thorington in Suffolk, I was struck by the generosity of the volunteers. It’s such a good feeling to know there are dedicated and committed people out there who will give their time on a chilly December morning to plant trees given that the simple reward for their actions – a line of proud trees – will be years in the future. We’ve credited the volunteers at the end of this short 2 minute film to mark the occasion. (Click on the picture below to watch) I hope you enjoy it.

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