A new wood will soon start springing up at Vicar Water Country Park, Clipstone, thanks to Newark and Sherwood District Council.

 The council has approved plans to plant more than 4,000 trees on around 4.4 hectares of land previously grazed by a sheep farmer.

Since he retired the council said it had spotted the chance to create an extensive habitat scheme in the Green Flag Award-winning park.

In August the council partnered with Nottinghamshire County Council and Sherwood Forest Trust to assess the suitability of a major tree planting scheme on the Vicardale site of the country park. 

 Then, following public consultation with environmental groups and the public, they devised plans to join up two existing woodland areas to create a wildlife corridor in the park.

The trees will bring about improvements to local biodiversity with future plans for woodland flower planting and the creation of wildlife habitats, including bird boxes and bat boxes.  

Among the 25 different variety of trees that will be planted are oak, silver birch, downy birch, aspen, wild cherry, leaved lime, rowan, hornbeam and crab apple.

Planting will see the design transitioning from short herbage in the centre, to longer soft vegetation, woody shrubs, and then high forest woodland. 

The public will not be able to access the wood while the trees establish.

 It is hoped planting work will start in January.

The Sherwood Forest Trust will maintain the site for the first 12 years, after which it is hoped maintenance can be integrated into the routine running of the park. 

Coun David Lloyd, leader of the district council, said: “This is great news for our district and is another example of our greening agenda at work.

“We recognise the urgent need to plant more trees to help address our climate emergency.  These plans will benefit the residents, wildlife and landscape of the local area. 

 “Through direct planting and free tree give-aways we have planted over 10,000 trees since 2019. This is already in excess of our original target to plant 10,000 trees by 2023.

“This project, combined with our annual free tree giveaways, puts us on course to potentially double this initial target figure by 2023.”