A FUNERAL business has chosen a wildlife area to celebrate planting its 10,000th sponsored tree.

For each funeral plan sold, Help the Aged Funeral Plan sponsors a new tree through a partnership with the Woodland Trust.

To celebrate reaching this milestone, the company is dedicating a stand of trees in the Blackbush Shaw Wood.

The wood lies in the proposed World Heritage Site for Downe House, the former home of the botanist Charles Darwin.

Ioan Reed-Aspley, of the Woodland Trust, said: "The UK is one of the least wooded countries in Europe and thanks to our partnership with Help the Aged we have been able to address this problem."