Vangarde Shopping Park gets a green boost
Local councillors have secured the planting of trees on Vangarde Shopping Park to add to the thousands of trees planted across the city over the last 4 years.
Huntington and New Earswick councillors recently joined Environment Agency teams to plant 34 semi-mature trees around the Vangarde site in a bid to improve wildlife biodiversity and air quality in the area, adding to trees planted when the Vangarde site was developed.
The planting was organised following a request from councillors for Huntington and New Earswick, after which the Environment Agency worked with the Vangarde Management team to determine where the trees could be planted.
Across the city thousands of trees are being planted to tackle impacts of climate change and increase biodiversity. The city’s new Community Woodland will see 210,000 trees planted over the next few years and more than 4,000 trees are set to be planted across the city. This will contribute to York’s new goal of increasing the city’s tree canopy cover from 10.8% to 13% by 2050 – the equivalent of 21 hectares of new canopy cover each year.
Cllr Keith Orrell, Liberal Democrat councillor for Huntington and New Earswick, commented:
“It’s great to see the Environment Agency and Vangarde teams work together to green our area. We know how important trees are to environment and health and wellbeing, so this is a welcome boost to Huntington. It was good to hear of the care that had been taken to choose appropriate semi-mature trees around the area.
“Local tree planting schemes contribute to our city wide plans to make York cleaner and greener and plant well over 200,000 trees in the next few years.
Cllr Runciman Liberal Democrat councillor for Huntington and New Earswick adds “We have been working with the Vangarde management team for several years and this tree planting is part of this partnership work, this time with the Environment Agency. We would like to thank the EA and Vangarde for their support in securing this green boost for our area.”