PLANTING trees is an effective way of taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they’re good for biodiversity, and in the right place they look good too, we know that. Most would say they make us feel good too.

South Lakeland District Council should be congratulated in their aim of planting 2,000 trees by 2025, but surely it’s far too few and far too slow, especially if Cllr Tom Harvey is right ('Hit and miss tree claims', Gazette, June 27) and the council is only telling us the number planted, and conveniently forgetting the number removed.

SLDC’s area is about 1,500 square km. So their target is just over one tree per square km. This is hardly ambitious, some might say pathetic. Mind you, Cllr Harvey didn’t tell us how many his lot plan to plant.

SLDC have asked where they should plant trees. Here are a few suggestions:

- Braithwaite Fold Car Park in Bowness, an eyesore

- along the verge of the A592

- at the entrance to Cockshott Point in Bowness

- and yet another unbelievable eyesore where a much-loved tree was destroyed by stealth at the dead of night: the triangle outside The Albert. All we have there now, at the heart of the village, is a pile of dilapidated road signs, more like a junk heap than a World Heritage Site.

Come on SLDC: get on and plant them, get the carbon sequestering, grow the biodiversity, and make the centre of Bowness beautiful again!

Dr James Bruce

Bowness-on-Windermere