If we really want to make a sustainable and regenerative impact, just planting trees to capture CO2 is not enough. For example, a healthy forest consists of 6 more layers besides trees, including shrubs, herbs, mycelium and ground cover. Therefore, we need to take a more holistic approach and also think about soil wildlife and insects.
An effective approach is to replant nature’s treasure chests* (hedgerows) that play a vital role in biodiversity, soil quality, protection from erosion, flooding and disease spread. Unfortunately, the Netherlands has lost 73% of this treasury over the past century, affecting not only the soil but also precious birds, hedgehogs, frogs, bees and other insects.
Yūgen Forest is working with United Designers, a global regenerative landscape design firm, to increase biodiversity on the property and achieve the goal of being climate adaptive. On the estate, therefore, we aim to plant as many m2 of “wooded banks” (a typical and culturally important type of hedge) as possible, where trees and shrubs are planted very densely between each other, on top of a 1 meter high sand mound. Thereby protecting rare native plant and animal species by creating restorative ecosystems as much as possible.
We would like to create another 400 meters or so of wooded bank on the estate and are still looking for sponsors for this. Estimated cost: 3,500 euros per 100 meters.
Please contact us for opportunities to make this a themed off-site day with your staff/colleagues, as we did for JTI.