Thousands of locally grown trees are preparing to boost Denbighshire’s biodiversity.

The Council’s Local Provenance Tree Nursery at St Asaph currently has around 24 varieties of tree growing on site.

The nursery is currently home to nearly 40,000 trees which are in different stages of growth. If all the trees are successful in growth that’s nearly 70 acres of woodland that could be covered by the work of the Council’s Biodiversity team and nursery volunteers.

This project has been funded by the Welsh Government, through the Local Nature Partnerships Cymru ENRaW project and Local Places for Nature grant.

The Council’s Biodiversity team use a local provenance method to source seeds across the county for growing at the tree nursery until they are ready to be planted on local land.

Work at the nursery to support tree growth includes a mix of preserving and boosting core tree members such as oaks and also lending a supporting hand for conserving rare trees such as the wild service tree.

Other trees grown on site include pedunculate oak, sessile oak, sweet chestnut, silver birch, alder, wych elm and grey willow.

Some of the trees that are ready to be planted will help form a new woodland area of the Green Gates Nature Reserve of which the tree nursery is a part of.

The work of the nursery is part of the Council’s commitment to addressing a Climate and Ecological Emergency declared in 2019, by helping increase the county tree canopy cover to reduce carbon emissions and provide stronger support for local nature.

Nearly 16,000 wildflowers have also been produced from county seeds at the tree nursery and these will continue to support existing wildflower meadows in Denbighshire though plug planting.

Many of these wildflowers support a variety of different wildlife. For example, bird’s foot trefoil can provide food for 160 species of insects, encouraging shrews and lapwings to visit the plant, improving nature’s resilience in local communities.

Once planted they will also add more variety to meadows for local communities to enjoy and learn from and maintain and improve biodiversity.

Having more wildflowers on the meadows also gives greater support to pollinators who are important to the human food supply chain.

Cllr Barry Mellor, Lead Member for Environment and Transport, said: “Growing trees takes time and it’s a credit to our Biodiversity team and the tree nursery volunteers that we now have 24 species of trees on site that will eventually go back out to tackle the impact of climate change for both residents and our local nature.

“It’s fantastic to think that we have potential acres of woodland siting at the nursery and I know the hard work is continuing to collect seeds this season from existing local woodlands to help continue to grow this number we have on site.”