Sorry for the dreadful commentary but this is a depressing site.

Even worse this is just a tiny fraction of mile upon mile of dead saplings, and plastic tree guards that will haunt the countryside for decades .

this one is so good

It would be better to just leave these areas alone and wait for natural regeneration. It would be +ve for biodiversity and succession would give scrub and woodland without planting.

Absolutely.Nature finds its own way.They even pay contractors money to mow and strim the areas between the dead saplings.utter madness.

That's a planting pattern designed by an engineer or a commercial plantation company. It reeks of a lack of consideration and that this 'mitigation' was only ever a troublesome afterthought forced on the developers by planners.

Absolutely,i spoke to the guys who were doing at the time and tried to explain what they were doing was hopeless and doomed to failure.I think they thought i didn't know what i was talking about.They have ruined some good gravel pits as well that had fantastic wader habitat .

So depressing. We are very fortunate to have wonderful work on tree planting being carried out by several groups including @cpreshropshire which includes follow-up to maximise chance of the whips surviving. And not using plastic tree guards if there are no rabbits/ deer etc.

@cpreshropshire I've aquired and repoted up several Black poplar cuttings that are well established and planting them soon.

The intention was good. Were they planted at the wrong time or was it the drought (and lack of watering) that did for them?

Didn't they replant a whole stretch of similar failed saplings elsewhere along the A14?

This is just a tiny section of it Brian.They planted a huge field just behind my house with at least 5,000 saplings in April in the drought year and all died.Its a pretty similar story all along the new A14 to Cambridge.