Short Heath Fields Trust

I'm Estelle Murphy I'm the deputy chair for Short Heath Fields Trust and I've lived in the area for fifty years. We were originally set up to save the playing fields up on Short Heath Road but in the process, we've adopted Bleak Hill Park as well. We are now a constituted friends of group and it's our job to look after the park that you're standing in. We have 420 trees, they're all wildlife orientated obviously being in a green park we want them to attract as much wildlife as we can. They're all being planted randomly, there's no set rhyme or reason because nature doesn't have set rhyme or reason , we don't get straight lines in nature. And we are also planting British bulbs in between the trees. So, that it looks as close to an unstaged natural woodland as we can possibly get it.

For us its part of a COVID memorial. The reason being that trees give you oxygen and one of the things that people lose when they have COVID is their ability to breathe. So we wanted the people who've lost people have somewhere nice where they can come sit, reflect, in a beautiful woodland and have plenty of oxygen to breathe.

Getting people to allow us to do what we need to do was a challenge. We actually contacted The Woodland Trust twelve months ago and literally we only got the final permission to plant yesterday. And as you can see we didn't waste time encase they changed their mind. [Laughs] Its invaluable.

Its absolutely invaluable because we wouldn't have be able to afford to go out and buy these trees. So, without The Woodland Trust this just wouln't happen. Its as simple as that.