GREEN-fingered schoolchildren are helping to choose the perfect plants for a future forest.

Environmental charity, Sylva Foundation, has been selected for a grant of between £8,000 and £12,000 to support plans for a new woodland at Long Wittenham, near Didcot.

The organisation was chosen by Tesco's Bags of Help fund for its Big Future Forest Plot Project, which will allow children to plant seeds in 10 plots, each containing 25 trees, on a recently-acquired 20 acre site which has been donated by a generous anonymous donor.

Pupils from Willowcroft Community School, in Didcot, visited the site to select plants for the future forest.

Dr Gabriel Hemery, head of the Sylva Foundation, said: “We had this amazing gift of 20 acres of land in south Oxfordshire by a private donor. We obviously wanted to think about whether we could practice what we preach.”

“We had to think of constructing a woodland. We wanted to do something educational and engage the community. We really wanted to involve the educational aspect of the project, but we didn’t want to charge the schools for the plots.

“Thanks to Tesco we can now give plots on behalf of the schools and create a forest education area.”

The site will be visited by up to 300 children from 10 local primary schools. Work is set to begin in January.

Dr Hemery continued: "Pupils can come back with their schools and their families for many years to come to see how the forest grows. This is a project with a long legacy.”

The Future Forest is set to be developed near the Sylva Foundation's Wood Centre in Long Wittenham, and will include a community orchard, wildflower meadow, and coppice.

The size of the grant depends on voting from Tesco shoppers. Between October 31 and November 13, a token given at checkout at the Abingdon Extra, Didcot Superstore and Faringdon Metro stores can be contributed towards the project – the number of tokens determining the extent of the awards.

The £12.5m Bags for Help grant scheme is funded by the 5p charge on plastic bags.

Lindsey Crompton, Head of Community at Tesco, said: “In total 1,170 community groups were awarded £8,000, £10,000 or £12,000 – that’s a massive £11.7m being invested into local projects.

“We are already seeing some great results from groups transforming their own environmental and greenspace areas."

The initiative was taken on in collaboration with Groundwork, a charity aiming to promote a more sustainable environment.

Graham Duxbury, Groundwork’s national Chief Executive, said: “Bags of Help is giving our communities both the funding and the support to create better, healthier and greener places for everyone to enjoy. "