{"id":255770,"date":"2025-10-28T02:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T02:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/255770\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T02:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T02:49:08","slug":"flood-prevention-tree-planting-scheme-looking-for-volunteers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/255770\/","title":{"rendered":"Flood prevention tree planting scheme looking for volunteers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">An environmental group which plants 20,000 trees and hedgerows a year across Somerset is on the lookout for more volunteers to offer their land.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Reimagining the Levels (RtL) was borne out of the 2014 floods in the county and tries to reduce the impact of flooding by slowing the flow of waters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The group has planted more than 120,000 trees so far, helping private land owners to provide shelter and diversity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Kate Towers, from Compton Dundon, said the scheme was &#8220;good for people, good for nature, good for the whole of the community&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Ms Towers added: &#8220;All the trees will take up water but they will help to slow the flow, they&#8217;ll help to stop the soil erosion as well. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;When you&#8217;ve got large areas of agriculture, you might have fields of maize or fields that are ploughed and the water then just runs off&#8230; so the trees will help to slow that down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">George Middleton, who has a smallholding near Wellington, had 560 trees and shrubs planted on his land by the RtL.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Mr Middleton said two plots of trees were planted against the bank running down to a nearby road to help with &#8220;run off&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Mr Middleton said he would encourage others with land prone to flooding to consider the scheme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He said that aside from the trees being a &#8220;visual joy&#8221; and good for wildlife, he thinks they have &#8220;definitely stabilised the land&#8221;. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An environmental group which plants 20,000 trees and hedgerows a year across Somerset is on the lookout for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-255770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}