Taking root Volunteers help plant new forest in Somerset

On a chilly day recently under stubborn grey skies, a band of green-fingered volunteers can be found in Somerset's Chew valley with spades in their hands and dirt under their fingernails.

- Jamie Grierson

About 30 helpers are split into pairs, carefully planting hawthorn, blackthorn and crab apple saplings, one tree at a time, undaunted by the scale of the project: they are creating one of the biggest new woodlands in England.

The Lower Chew Forest, as it will be known, is a vast new woodland between Bristol and Bath made up of 100,000 native trees planted by about 1,000 volunteers mobilised by Avon Needs Trees.

The charity says the 170-hectare (420-acre) woodland will increase biodiversity, reduce flooding and lock up carbon to help prevent climate breakdown. But what does it take to make it happen?