A West Cumbrian entrepreneur is aiming to offset her company's effect on the environment by planting 9000 trees.

Sally Phillips, the founder of Chimney Sheep in Maryport, has bought a seven acre piece of land where she plans to plant the trees.

Chimney Sheep sells a range of eco-friendly products, including chimney draught excluders made from Herdwick wool.

She took ownership of the land in January with the aim of minimising the environmental impact of her business and is now calling out to other businesses to do the same.

An ecologist and avid environmentalist for most of her life, Sally’s hope is that the trees will help benefit the local environment in a multitude of ways including minimising the CO2 impact of Chimney Sheep.

The woodland will sequester approximately 18 tonnes of CO2 per year, with each acre of trees absorbing the same amount of CO2 as that which is produced when driving a car 26,000 miles.

Sally will also ensure a range of native tree varieties will be planted to support the local ecosystem including more unusual varieties such as black poplar, locally cultivated aspen, elm, sweet chestnut, walnut, hornbeam and field maple.

The trees will act to accelerate the piece of land from grassland to woodland, helping to introduce a bigger range of native species to the area and increase its biodiversity.

Sally said: “The development of the wood has very much been a team effort.

"I’m grateful to both my staff and customers who have helped me to grow Chimney Sheep to a point where I have been able to achieve this .

"It is enormously gratifying to have a business that sells environmentally friendly products in order to finance

the purchase of land that, in turn, will take direct action to benefit the environment.

"Although seven acres seems like a huge undertaking it’s made me realise that this is just a token effort. We need millions of trees planting in order to mitigate against the greenhouse effect and to restore habitat loss.

"I’ve found myself in a situation where I can take positive action myself, so team Chimney Sheep’s mission is to keep at it, keep selling our eco-products, keep buying land, keep planting trees - seven acres is just the start for us."