NEW Radnor WI launched its participation in the National Federation Wales' Tree Project on June 30 by staging a 'pom pom bomb'.

'The National Federation is working alongside the Woodland Trust to preserve, protect, and plant urban trees in Wales', said a spokesperson for the branch. 'Between 2006 and 2013, 7000 large trees appear to have been lost. The effect this has on air pollution, flooding, carbon capture, and a city or town's mean surface temperatures is huge, not to mention the aesthetic and psychological impact.'

'This loss can be put down not only to development but also disease, and as a more rural area, this is the angle we are coming at the project from. We want to create a snapshot of our local tree populations and celebrate how lucky we are to be surrounded by magnificent trees.'

The branch thought a 'pom pom bomb', decorating trees with hundreds of pom poms, would be a fun and colourful way to draw attention to the more serious message of the project.

On July 7 a workshop was held to introduce people to tree identification and potential threats to their safety, as well as how to measure a tree's height.

This information will be passed on to create national database resulting in Treezilla - a monster map of Welsh urban trees.