Are There Giant Moles in Kimberley and Swingate???

Update on Wednesday 19th Jan – trees are now being planted! Hopefully they will all be in by the end of this week!

Giant mole hills have started appearing in a few parts of Kimberley and Swingate!

The good news is, we’re not being invaded by Weremoles – it’s part of a project between Kimberley Town Council, Notts County Council and the Forestry Commission to plant more trees in the town and the mole hills are the ground preparation for the tree planting over the next few weeks.

The Town Council applied for funding from the Forestry Commission’s Treescapes Fund last summer, and the good news is we were successful! Notts County Council and Via will plant the trees and look after them for us for the first 3 years, when they should be well established.

The idea is to plant trees in urban areas to create a more attractive and environmentally supportive environment near to where we live. We’ve deliberately chosen attractive, native trees that are good for wildlife and soak up lots of carbon. When the trees are established we plan to work with local schools to re-wild the areas underneath the new trees.

One of the trees will be planted in the Memorial Garden at the Chapel on the Hill as a lasting memorial to local people who died of Covid-19 and at an appropriate time we’ll put in a plaque to remember those affected by the pandemic.

The trees will be planted during January – the best time of the year for larger trees – and as soon as we know when we’ll update this page.

Here are the trees we’ve chosen

Knowle Park

A line of Whitebeams along Knowle Lane – these have silver/green leaves and white blossoms in spring and are great for bees. Once established we’ll let the ground underneath grow wild and plant wild flowers.
A Common Oak – great for hundreds of insects for hundreds of years and eats more carbon than any other native tree!

Stag Recreation Ground