Its still persistently raining and everywheres flooded. So lets plant some more trees.

As I write this, the dog is sat next to me moaning about the rain, the cats sat on the window sill watching the rain and the little flowering cherry at the front of the house is trying his damn hardest to soak up as much rain as possible and slow the water flow.
The little norway spruce at the back is doing his part as well, alongside the maple, the cherry, the cursed willow, the apple (which is really battling on) seven of the hated leylandii and the two hollies I scooped up years ago and stuck in my dockey bag.

Why am I yabbering about these trees in my garden you may ask, well, with all this damned rain comes the risk of flooding and these little trees, along with hundreds of others are doing there bit to help prevent it. A study for the Environment agency has shown that planting trees around rivers can reduce flood heights by 20%.

How do they do that then??

Well trees intercept a large amount of water by root uptake, storing this water before slowly releasing it back into the atmosphere by transpiration. Water infiltration around trees is also pretty high, the soil is less compacted so its permeable allowing water to penetrate, rather than flow along the top at speed and straight into a concrete drain thats already pushed to capacity.
And one of the biggest points is the roots bind the soil and prevent erosion, stopping sendiment build up in rivers, streams and dykes. This means less dredging, larger water storage areas and less chance of houses being full of flood mud.
So lets plant more trees, more of the right type of trees, work them into new developments to contribute to suds (suds is one of those wonderful planning acronyms) and lets stop cutting all the old trees down willy nilly, then we might have a bit less flooding, and the money that would have to be spent on fancy flood defences can go to something else.

If you want to learn a bit more about how trees can help stop flooding there’s articles all over google.

If you want to plant some more trees we can help with that.

If you want it to stop raining you can join the club.

Thanks for reading I’m off to dig my wellies and waterproofs out for tomorrows tree survey.