BROUGHTON Hall is to be congratulated on its regenerative projects.

The partnership with the White Rose Forest project is yet another important endeavour and will undoubtedly contribute toward nature recovery and flood alleviation.

One hopes the estate won’t remain a “sanctuary” but a model taken up by other landowners, thereby connecting up wilder areas of woodland, wetland and species-rich grassland to create the wildlife corridors that are so desperately needed today.

The 250,000 trees do come, however, with 250,000 plastic tree guards; it’s regrettable that the government still uses public money to support the fossil fuel industry’s by-product and seed the countryside with plastic, which as we all know has an infinite life span.

Currently only a fraction of tubes are recycled and there is a distinct absence of plans, facilities, or a contractual requirement to clean up the millions of redundant tree and hedge guards - the equivalent of billions of crisp packets strewn about the nation’s landscape.

One hopes Broughton Hall has plans in place to remove and recycle all plastic guards (currently manufacturers and recyclers charge between £70-100 to cart away one bag of tubes and it remains unclear how many actually are recycled).

Perhaps any further planting will use compostable tree guards, something the government should be funding and all of us supporting.

Bruce McLeod

Otterburn