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What a busy winter and spring season it has been at Manch!  Work teams and volunteers from a number of local, national and international businesses have been visiting Manch to help with maintenance and tree planting work throughout the season.

We have been working to plant trees into some areas of the older woods that have been badly damaged by storms in the last few years.  Volunteers have done great work clearing undergrowth, finding and marking natural regeneration and planting new young trees where they are needed.

Visitors enjoyed guided walks of the woods, talks on the Manch Story and management of the estate, picnic lunches in the working yard and plenty of hard work planting trees in the fresh air.  The volunteer days are managed and hosted by Nikki Keeling who does a brilliant job looking after the education centre at Manch and passing on her great knowledge and passion for the woods.

Photographs and more detail about the brilliant sponsors supporting the work at Manch coming soon.

The team at Trees on the Land would like to thank everyone who took part planting trees on and around Saturday 9th February 2019.

After a very busy production and distribution phase early in the year, more than 140,000 trees were distributed for planting across the 32 counties of Ireland and Northern Ireland during February.

Just over 700 landowners planted trees this year with farmers, smallholders, councils, community groups, sports clubs, schools, colleges and many other landowners accommodating trees.  Many different projects were undertaken including the planting of small woodlands, hedges, coppices, shelter belts, orchards, agroforestry, reforestation and other landscape planting work.

Huge thanks to all of the collection points, nurseries, volunteers, drivers and other helpers who worked so hard to get trees out to everyone and special thanks, as always, to those who hosted the collection points.

Work is now starting for the 2020 planting project which will take place on Saturday 15th February.

For all project information please see www.treesontheland.com and all enquiries to info [at] treesontheland.com

European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018

Monday 29th October 2018
11am – 4pm

at The Manch Project
Manch Estate, Ballineen, Co. Cork.
Eircode: P47NW62

To celebrate the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, we’re hosting a day of walks, talks and workshops at our Manch headquarters.  Set in over 300 acres of woodland, the Manch project is the base for all of our work at the Green Economy Foundation.

• Guided walks  – a wonderful opportunity to learn about the woodland establishment and management work at Manch and to explore the old broadleaf woodland and our more recent sustainable woodland projects.
• Practical workshops – will include tree planting, seed collecting and woodland crafts.
• Talks and discussions – Our education centre will host a series of talks and discussions on sustainable development, environmental policies and cultural heritage.

A full schedule of the day’s events will be published here shortly.

All welcome – Entrance is Free – No dogs please.

For more information please click HERE.

Contact:  Nikki Keeling – 087 791 6919

The Trees on the Land team are delighted to announce that applications for trees to be planted in February 2019 are now open.

Applications are open to farmers, smallholders, community groups, councils, schools, colleges and other landowners.

Tree packs for the establishment of small woodland areas, coppice, shelter-belts, hedgerows, orchards and agroforestry are available.

Applications close at Midnight on Wednesday 5th December 2018.

For all information and to make an application please see the website at www.treesontheland.com

Sunday 26th August

Heritage Week runs from the 18th-26th August 2018; this year the Heritage Week theme is ‘make a connection’

Connecting with Our Native Trees – The Green Economy Foundation are hosting a guided walk of the woodlands at Manch on Sunday 26th August 2.30 – 5pm.

For more information please visit the Heritage Week website at the following link:

https://www.heritageweek.ie/whats-on/event/connecting-with-our-native-trees

30th April & 1st May 2018

The Green Economy Foundation team enjoyed a sunny couple of days out at the Native Woodlands Conference ’20 Years A-Growing’ in Co. Wicklow earlier this month.

Organised by Woodlands of Ireland, the conference was a celebration of Ireland’s native woodlands.  A busy day with more than 20 speakers and then a field trip looking at native woodland managment and establishment projects in the area.  The NWC provided in-depth analysis and discussion of many of the important issues surrounding native woodland establishment, management and education and a really great chance to catch up with friends and colleagues in the industry.

There were many good thoughts to take away and a huge amount of material for further discussion.  Videos of all of the speakers will be available to view at the conference website soon, see www.nativewoodlandsconference.com

Many thanks to Declan Little and his team for organising such a useful and positive event.

We ran a productive volunteer work day at Manch earlier in March, clearing up after the snow and planting a few new apple trees. Many thanks to everyone who joined us and to Nikki for organising it all.

We planted ten Irish apple trees supplied by Future Forests (www.futureforests.ie), the first new trees in the walled garden for several decades.  Hopefully they will grow on well and, in time, replace some of the magnificent but ageing apple trees there that won’t go on forever.

It’s a great time of year for assessing both the garden and the woodlands when all of the greenery has died back over the winter and the snow has flattened things down a bit.  It is easy to see the progress of young trees and assess their condition and form, especially in areas that become quickly overgrown during the spring and summer.

There is evidence of spring after all the cold weather with brave daffodils starting to show their faces.  The hazel and alder is in flower and the blackthorn flowers are coming.

We’ll be running another work day soon – details to follow on the website.

Daffodils at Manch – photograph by Nikki Keeling

– Sunday 4th March 2018
– Manch Estate, Ballineen, Co. Cork
– 11.30am – 4.30pm
– All Welcome

Come and see what’s going on at the Manch Project this spring.  A guided woodland walk will start at 2pm but feel free to wander and explore our 25km of woodland and riparian paths from 11.30am.

The Manch Project is a unique woodland management and establishment project developed by the Green Economy Foundation at the beautiful 320 acre Manch Estate in Co. Cork.  The woodlands at Manch are a working example of Continuous Cover and Sustainable Woodland Management principles; an alternative to the common system of even-aged plantation forestry designed for clearfell.  Come along and see the difference.

This is a free event – donations are welcome on the day.
No dogs please – Sorry!

A short TEDx talk by our CEO Cillian Lohan – providing a simple explanation of The Circular Economy.

The Trees on the Land project has just completed a busy 2018 planting day with almost 600 small sites planted with native trees on and around Saturday 10th February.

A huge thanks to everyone who took part in the tree planting – The weather was pretty awful and very cold in most places but most people managed to wrap up warm and get out planting on the day.  Particular thanks go to those kind people hosting collection points and to others who helped move trees to people further out from the collections.

Just over 130,000 trees were distributed for planting as small woodlands, shelter belts, hedgerows, coppice, agroforestry and orchard projects.  Planting sites are located on farms and smallholdings, at community sites, in schools and colleges and with many other landowners across the 32 counties with a significant rise this season in the number of orchard and agroforestry projects included.

The team look forward to announcing schemes for 2019 over the coming months.

See www.treesontheland.com for more information.