Aberdeen City Council has approved a long-term framework and plan for the stewardship and expansion of urban, street and rural trees and woodlands across the region.

The Council's Operational Delivery committee agreed the Tree & Woodland Strategic Implementation Plan which sets out the vision, priorities, and an action plan for sustaining existing trees and growing new areas.

It also includes launching a 'A Million Trees for Aberdeen' programme where the City Council will plant with partners, a further one million trees by 2032.

The Plan also includes:

• Working with communities;

• Reviewing the management of council-managed open spaces to create more sustainable and safer green areas and open spaces;

• Protecting and enhancing Aberdeen's green belt, green spaces, and open spaces so they can be enjoyed for purposes of leisure, sport, and environmental wellbeing;

• Investigating the creation of new pocket parks, promoting, and improving woodland;

• Maintaining and planting street trees, ensuring the right trees are planted in the right places which will reduce flood risk in urban areas;

-- Advertisement --

• Developing a Community Environmental Improvement Fund, for communities to access to implement their own small-scale local environmental improvements.

Aberdeen City Council Operational Delivery committee convener Councillor Miranda Radley said: "Aberdeen is a beautiful green city with many award-winning parks and green spaces and has an incredible mixture of tree-lined streets, tree-planted green spaces and woodland.

"We also have many residents, schools, community partnerships and businesses who care about their local green spaces and the trees within these spaces.

"The Trees and Woodland Strategic Implementation Plan sets out the vision, strategic priorities and an action plan for the future stewardship and expansion of Aberdeen's trees and woodland which is a fantastic prospect for us all."

Aberdeen City Council Co-Leader Councillor Ian Yuill said: "The Trees and Woodland Strategic Implementation Plan provides a long-term framework to expand Aberdeen's urban woodland.

"This will benefit everyone who lives, works and visits our city. Planting trees and creating new woodland will improve our local environment and make Aberdeen more resilient to the impacts of climate change such as extreme weather."

The Tree and Woodland Strategic Implementation Plan, which has been named The Granite City Forest, said there are approximately 2,410 hectares of woodland distributed across Aberdeen, representing 13% of its total land area of 18,830 hectares.

From 1988 to 2017, about 300 hectares of new woodland were planted across Aberdeen of which approximately 40% was carried out by the City Council, including its "Tree for Every Citizen" woodland creation project in 2010. This project comprised the planting of 13 sites of mixed conifer and broadleaved planting distributed across the city and totalled a net planted area of some 84 hectares with more than 200,000 trees planted.