BOLTON'S dream of making the town a greener place for the millennium has been given a boost by the National Lottery.

As reported in the BEN, the council is considering a host of ideas before it makes a bid to the lottery's Millennium Fund.

Ideas include a £15 million green walkway linking Queen's Park to the town centre and making Bolton a "wildlife city" by creating new habitats and enhancing existing ones.

Now there is more good news from the lottery, which will soon be inviting bids from its Heritage Fund to improve access to urban parks and green spaces. This means that councils will have broader access to funding to develop parks and green spaces.

Bolton's lottery officer, Vivienne Morris, said: "We see a lot of potential for some of our urban parks.

"The Heritage people said we will receive full details of the initiative within the next 10 days.

"There may be some implications for a tie in with the millennium ideas for Queens Park, but I think the idea is to bid for money to enhance existing green areas." . . .and trees by the million A PROJECT to plant up to one million trees a year by the turn of the century has been launched by North West Water.

The company, one of the largest landowners in the region, is to step up planting from an existing rate of about 300,000 trees a year over the next five years to a target of one million by the millennium.

Much of the new planting will form part of the Red Rose and Mersey community forests and over 50 sites have been identified within the proposed forest boundaries.

The firm is also undertaking major tree planting at Leigh wastewater treatment works.

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