Staff from Nuneaton based NBTY Europe have been helping to create England’s biggest new forest by planting over 200 new trees at a site in the midlands.
The early summer planting day kicked off a partnership between the business and The National Forest which saw 30 staff from the NBTY’s Eliot Park HQ spend a day getting down and dirty with foresters.
The National Forest is one of the UK’s boldest environmentally-led regeneration projects, creating woodland and other wildlife habitats over 200 square miles of the English Midlands.
NBTY Europe has pledged £20,000 to the National Forest Company to create a new forest site in the Nanpantan area, which is close to its distribution facility in Burton-Upon-Trent.
The company – which operates the Holland & Barrett chain of health food stores – already has an advertising campaign which portrays a cartoon woodland called the good life. This new partnership, it says, will “help give something back to the local community and create a real woodland which the public can enjoy for many years to come”.
As part of the day, workers planted oak, hornbeam, walnut and wild cherry trees as tiny ‘whips’, very young saplings which in a few short years will grow taller than the people who planted them.
Jenny Sianou, PR Executive at NBTY who helped organise the planting day, said: “It’s great to be able to get out of the office and help make a difference to such a worthwhile project like this. Knowing that what we have planted will outlive most of us is a huge legacy and we all hope to revisit The National Forest again to see how the site progresses.”
