Meet the selfless business owner planting trees across Northamptonshire ‘to give back’

A Northamptonshire business owner is making it his mission to give back to the county by planting trees in various locations.

Iain Welters who owns Brixworth-based Orange and Black Coffee Co, which is an on-the-go takeaway coffee shop, wants to give back to his community so has begun a huge tree planting project.

Along with a team of volunteers, Iain has already started planting trees to help regenerate the Martin Moore Wood on Brampton Valley Way.

During the Bank Holiday weekend, the businessman and several helpers also planted 100 native beech, birch, rowan and maple trees at Brixworth Country Park, alongside the park’s head ranger.

Iain said: “I have been funding and organising tree planting for over a year now just as part of my own personal environmental pledge, and more recently I have offered local community members the opportunity to donate towards tree planting whereby I double the number of trees at my cost to that of community contributions.

“I have been working with the council to ask for land to plant and I do it all free of charge just to try and routinely put a bit back.

“Despite my own personal family traumas through lockdowns I just got fed up with thinking all the issues were too big to do anything about so I just started planting trees and it snow-balled as people saw what I was doing and took it to heart.”

As well as helping to improve the environment, Iain is hoping to inspire the next generation with his tree planting mission.

He added: “It is so important to have community engagement and most of all to teach the young people, which they have absorbed with open hearts and have been taking to it with vigour and enthusiasm.

“It is very exciting just helping to change habits, educating and showing people just how easy it is for us all to do our bit, for example when every tree reaches about ten years old it will absorb enough carbon and omit enough oxygen to sustain two people for the rest of its natural life and it only takes minutes to plant.

“The children love that and will remember that for life.

“Everyone wins when we put a bit back and teach the children about what we are doing and why. That is the real magic for change.”

Search Orange and Black Coffee Co on Facebook to find out more about the tree planting.