This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Northern England is set to get a whole lot greener. On Sunday, the UK government unveiled plans for a vast new forest spanning the country from coast to coast. Shadowing the path of the east-west M62 Highway, the new forest will create a broad green rib across England from Liverpool to the east coast city of Hull.

If fully realized along the lines announced this week, the forest will ultimately contain 50 million new trees, stretched in a dense 62,000-acre patchwork along a 120-mile strip. Not only will the forest repopulate one of the least wooded parts of the country with local, mainly broadleaf tree species, it will also provide a band of newly greened landscape to escape to from the many big cities located nearby.

The goal of a thick green ribbon is still a long way off, of course. So far, the government has pledged just an initial £5.7 million of the £500 million needed to fully realize the project. But what’s significant about the plan is that it amps up a transformation that is in fact already underway—it is actually the second major attempt in recent years to re-green the English landscape.

That first attempt lies roughly 100 miles south, in the English Midlands, where a vast new woodland stretching across a 200-mile strip is steadily reaching maturity. First planted 28 years ago, the National Forest, as it is called, is just beginning to mature and reveal how transformative such a rethink of the landscape can be. Like the new northern forest, it’s not just about providing a new carbon sink and leisure facility, but also about imagining what a landscape partly denuded by industrial exploitation and grazing can look like once these uses become obsolete.

This sounds wonderful—but first, a reality check. If Britain is planning new forests, it’s because the island badly needs them. Overall, the UK’s landscape contains one of Europe’s lowest proportions of woodland: just 13 percent. No one expects a populous, heavily developed country like the UK to reach the levels of, say Finland, which, at over 73 percent woodland, is Europe’s leafiest country by far. The UK trails far behind its more comparable neighbors Belgium (22.6 percent woodland) and France (31 percent), making it look decidedly bare and patchy by comparison.

This is especially true in England, which is just 10 percent woodland, compared to 15 percent in Wales and 18 percent in Scotland; in both countries, forestry has replaced pastoral farming in some areas. Even this small proportion is under attack, as ancient woodlands across the country face destruction. Current threats are numerous, including the endangering of 35 ancient forest tracts destined to be damaged by the construction of England’s new high-speed rail link, because tunneling or diversion has been deemed too expensive and inconvenient. Already, some critics are protesting that the Northern Forest project is a fig leaf—albeit a vast one—intended to mask neglect and abuse of woodlands elsewhere. There may also be a degree of political machination going on (although when isn’t there?), with the British government seeking a high-profile project that can reassure people that leaving the EU will not mark an end to all green policies and state support.

The existing National Forest nonetheless shows how attractive and sustainable such projects can be, provided they are not created at the exclusion of other conservation efforts. Its first saplings were planted in 1995 across a broad sweep that mixes towns, croplands, and former coalfields. Consisting mainly (if not exclusively) of slower-growing broadleaf trees sourced from the local area—a marked difference from the regimented stands of non-native pine that British forestry focused on for much of the 20th century—the forest is gradually starting to reveal its ultimate appearance.