On a chilly day in December under stubborn grey skies, a band of green-fingered volunteers can be found in Somerset’s Chew valley with spades in their hands and dirt under their fingernails.

There are about 30 helpers, split into pairs, carefully planting hawthorn, blackthorn and crab apple saplings, one tree at a time. Undaunted by the scale of the project, they are planting one of the biggest new woodlands in England.

The Lower Chew Forest, as it will be known, is a vast new woodland between Bristol and Bath with 100,000 native trees planted by about 1,000 volunteers mobilised by the woodland creation charity Avon Needs Trees.