Month: June 2025

DSSR continues to support the NHS Forest

For many years, DSSR has been a sponsor of the NHS Forest, an alliance of health sites working to transform their green space to realise their full potential for health, wellbeing and biodiversity, and to encourage engagement with nature. It is run by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, an independent UK charity, as part of its Green Space for Health programme.

We believe in the important work being carried out by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and continue to support the good work carried out by NHS Forest. DSSR colleagues based in different offices across the UK have also volunteered their time, helping to plant more trees on NHS estates. Over the past 12 months, DSSR has once again supported the NHS Forest by sponsoring 500 trees.

Green spaces are one of our most neglected health resources. A growing body of evidence points to the benefits of access to nature and green space for mental and physical health, including positive outcomes for heart rates and blood pressure, stress levels, mood and self-esteem, obesity, type 2 diabetes, post-operative recovery, birth weight, children’s cognitive development and cardiovascular disease.

When people have more access to green space where they live, income-related health inequalities are less marked. In England alone, it has been calculated that the NHS could save an estimated £2.1 billion every year in treatment costs if everyone had access to good quality green space.

NHS Forest 2024-25 – Planting Season in Review

This season, the NHS Forest facilitated the planting of 25,464 trees across the UK:

• 11,950 (46.9%) were distributed as 245 ‘Trees for Healthcare bundles’
• 12,461 (48.9%) made up larger site-specific orders
• 1,053 trees (4.1%) were productive fruit varieties

The combined total supplied in winter 2024-25 accounts for 16% of all planting since NHS Forest’s inception in 2009. Species diversity was increased this season, with a total of 32 native species supplied (up from 20 in 2023/24), plus 3 non-native species and 59 fruit varieties.

NHS Forest was pleased to supply fruit bundles again this season as part of our Healthcare Orchards scheme. Sites were able to request a bespoke mix of apple, pear, cherry, plum, damson, gage, medlar and quince varieties; apple cultivars were by far the most popular orchard tree choice.

• Trees were applied for and supplied to 159 unique healthcare sites managed by 125 trusts and other NHS service providers.
• The average size of all orders was 127 trees.
• The largest number of trees supplied to a single site was 2,290 (Princess Alexandra Hospital), and the smallest was 5 (Mary Seacole Nursing Home).
• Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust was also the largest recipient trust, followed closely by South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust and Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which also planted more than 2,000 trees each.

“NHS Forest would like to express our sincere appreciation to all tree sponsors that have collectively funded our planting work this season. It simply wouldn’t be possible for us to operate at this scale without your support, and we are immensely grateful for your backing of our project.”

Liz, Hattie, Neil, Dan and Una
The NHS Forest Team