TREE NURSERY PROJECT – Peterborough Environmental City Trust (PECT)

Case Study: Peterborough Environmental City Trust (PECT) Tree Nursery Project

June 2025

Peterborough Environmental City Trust (PECT) is an environmental charity promoting sustainable practices to help protect the environment and to leave a legacy for future generations. They deliver a wide variety of projects including education, campaigning, health and nature conservation.

PECT received £4,955 from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Fund for Nature to support the creation of a community tree nursery for the city of Peterborough. Located in Castor, the funding will include the purchase of items such as fencing (for the protection of the trees) and a composting toilet for volunteers and staff.

The six-acre nursery will house locally sourced tree stocks and become a tree holding area. It will act as an environmental demonstration site to be used as an educational resource and share PECT’s good practice approach. The project aims to address tree supply challenges, enhance biodiversity and establish wildflower areas. It also aims to build a stock of heritage fruit tree varieties which become synonymous with the city and the surrounding bordering areas. The nursery will sit around a neighbouring PECT project which will see the installation of a 150 square metre pond to establish wildlife habitats. It is part of a longer-term strategy of integrated planting to support natural lifecycles.

Tony Cook from the Peterborough Environment City Trust, said: “We don’t plant trees without putting in wildflowers of some description. If we were to just put wildflowers, and there are no hedgerows, those insects would have all the food in the world, but nowhere to live.”

Fencing around the tree site will be crucial to this project’s success and some of the funding will be used for this purpose, protecting the trees from predators, such as deer and rabbits.

A compost toilet will also be purchased and installed alongside two subterranean compost bins. The objective for sustainable waste management embodied in these and other facilities will educate groups who visit the site.

The project hopes to achieve improving the local tree supply chain to support environmental projects across Peterborough and surrounding areas, enhance biodiversity and demonstrate best practice in sharing knowledge in woodland and habitat creation and management.

Volunteers are already crucial to PECT’s work and the vast expanse at the new tree nursery will facilitate this further. They have already attracted 50 or more volunteers at events at the site – more than most other PECT-run projects – and the acreage lends itself to hosting bigger working parties in due course. Volunteers are often recruited from neighbouring charities, and these collaborative relationships help in delivering corporate and volunteer events, sharing information, resources and knowledge.

Grant funding, such as that from the Fund for Nature, is critical for PECT’s continued operations as a charity and raising its own profile. Success from any funding in turn helps enable future funding applications from other sources.

There is considerable excitement from those at PECT and its partners about the proposed funding outcomes. The project outlines a comprehensive approach to species and biodiversity enhancement, sustainable environmental management practices, and offers the opportunity to engage and educate the wider community through nature conservation efforts.

Tony concluded: “Without funds like this, whatever the focus of them, we simply couldn’t operate. It’s absolutely essential being able to demonstrate through a fund like this that we’re making a start.”