Sidmouth Guides helped create a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee community orchard in the Byes with a day of tree planting last weekend.

Last Saturday 22 girls set to work with their spades and lots of enthusiasm to help plant them hazel, blackthorn, crab apple, elder and dog rose saplings.

After a successful application to the Woodland Trust for a pack of 420 trees they were joined by other Rainbows, Brownies and Guides, along with a number of unit leaders and parents, from around the district to assist them.

With advice from Michael Horsnell from the Friends of the Byes and landscape architect Aileen Shackell, the planting took place near the Guide Hall and along the bottom of Water Lane.

Lorna Beard, from 1st Sidmouth Guides, said: “Hopefully it will be something that all those involved in will remember taking part in, as the hedges start to settle in and provide food and habitats for the local wildlife.”

The Friends of the Byes has 1,000 native trees and shrubs to plant in the Jubilee Wood over the next few weeks.

The Woodland Trust has given the group the saplings, which were also part funded by a lottery money through charity Groundwork UK, to put in several dense copses throughout the length of the Sidmouth parkland.

Aileen Shackell, who has been liaising with The National Trust, the district council, local ecologists and the Friends of the Byes said: “The trees have been chosen with the help of ecology studies to maximise benefits to wildlife, and enhancing the beauty for visitors to the Byes.”

The Byes project is part of the Woodland Trust’s plans to get six million trees planted across the country in the jubilee year.

For more information please email FOTByes@gmail.com.