Zest Plants Trees in Environmental and Wildlife Initiatives

Timber garden furniture, grow your own and decorative garden structure specialist, Zest, will be raising awareness of its most recent environmental work at this year’s Glee (stand number #20D30-E31).

During a recent visit to North Poland by Rhys Hughes, Director of Strategic Development & Supply Chain, and Group Buyer, Mark Stewart, the pair took part in an initiative to plant over 10,000 acres of trees alongside 950 volunteers from the local area.

The previously wooded area had been destroyed by a hurricane in 2017. Zest, together with its main supply partners in Eastern Europe, is dedicated to re-planting and nurturing woodland habitats and is collaborating on planting schemes and the nurture of wildlife habitats in Europe and the UK.

North Poland has the best-managed forests in Europe, and Rhys and Mark visited nurseries where the trees are grown from seed before being planted out once over a year old.

These trees are then left to mature and felled after 80 to 120 years with timber like this being used to make Zest’s award-winning outdoor garden products.

Commenting on the recent initiatives, Rhys Hughes, Director of Strategic Development & Supply Chain at the Zest said:

“Part of Zest’s mission is ‘contributing to the communities in which we serve,’ be this raising money for local charities, or by having a positive impact on the local environment.  It’s great to see so many volunteers come together to improve local environments, be it by planting vast acres of trees in Poland to planting hedges in farm wetlands in North Wales.”

“Zest is very environmentally conscious.  We use solar panels on office buildings and biomass produced on-site is used to heat the business. Zest only uses pressure-treated slow-grown softwood, sourced from responsibly-managed Forest Stewardship Certified® (FSC®- C114990) managed forests.

“Being a certified FSC® member ensures that the forests are being managed in a way that preserves biological diversity and benefits the lives of local people and workers while ensuring it sustains economic viability.”

As well as the hedge planting, six Zest employees have helped to plant trees in Afonwen, Denbighshire. The team planted rowan, birch, hazel, oak and maple trees, locating them in gorse bushes to prevent livestock from eating the saplings.

Thomas Jones, Zest’s Senior Digital Marketing Executive who took part in both projects said:

“It’s great to be able to help wildlife return to this area. This is just one of the many ways that Zest contributes to the areas in which we work and live.”