Country diary: The rolling hills have been planted with 280,000 trees of 15 species | Mark Cocker

Broughton, Yorkshire: The estate is only three years into the most transformative example of rewilding in EnglandIsn't it strange that green is the colour we most associate with nature concern. What bright green invariably means in the fields of the northern uplands, such as the Yorkshire Dales, is a place where wildlife has been almost completely purged. The point about field colour is so dramatically made at the Broughton estate you'd think it had been contrived precisely to convey this message. Here, the rolling hills, just south of the national park, have been planted with 280,000 trees of 15 species across 192 hectares (474 acres). In 2023, a further 72 hectares of the same bright green hue are earmarked for conversion to wood pasture.Currently, the planted areas are a forest of plastic tree-sleeves, but even in this raw state, the dominant impression is of the terrain's underlying colour, which is a kind of matted grey-brown. Yet a tongue of the old livid-green sheepwalk intrudes into these rewilding sections and the difference couldn't be sharper. Continue reading...