An Inspector Calls

Northwood Green Streets and Northwood Forest Hills have been nominated by The Mersey Forest for the Royal Forestry Society's Urban Forestry Award 2013.

The purpose of the Award is to encourage and recognise inspiring projects involving trees in any land use within urban areas. These may be in streets, parks, urban woodlands or within social housing. Entries are expected to show a strategic and innovative approach to urban tree management and regeneration.

Only 17% of England’s area is classified as urban yet 81% of the population live in our urban areas. 

Urban areas are the powerhouses of the economy yet also the most environmentally challenging. 15% of England’s woodlands are in urban super output areas, so targeting resources on these can deliver strong social, environmental and economic benefits (the triple bottom line). 

Our urban areas have a woodland cover of, on average, 8.79 %, compared to the rural areas woodland cover of 10.13%.

The Mersey Forest's projects in Northwood demonstrate clearly  how an innovative strategically planned green infrastructure strategy for Northwood has helped deliver these schemes on the ground.

Two members of the Royal Forestry Society visited the sites in May to look at how the recently planted street trees signpost visitors and residents to local shops,amenities and green spaces including Northwood Forest Hills and the Old Rough Park within Northwood.These schemes are part of an ongoing strategy to green the area and provide residents with sustainable walking and cycling routes that provide a local recreation area, contributing  to improved well being.

View our Kirkby Case Study about Northwood's street trees.

Local residents openly praised the work of those that have transformed these spaces from grey to green in as little as 3 years making Northwood as part of The Mersey Forest a more relaxed place to live..