Tuesday 9th December 2014
Trees for Cities do exactly what the name says – they plant trees in parts of cities that need them the most. On Friday I was lucky enough to go and plant trees with them, in a project to plant 10,000 trees in National Tree Week.
As anyone living in England will know, it’s currently a little on the cold side, so wrapped up in: 2 pairs of trousers, 2 t-shirts, 2 hoodies, 1 fleece, a raincoat and a nice woolly hat, I jumped on the bus to Blondin Park in Northfields to help start planting.
After joining a group of 20 staff from the GLA (Greater London Authority) we set about planting 800 trees into a kidney bean-shaped area. The day of digging involved a lot of jumping up and down on a spade and attempting to ward off local dogs from stealing our lunch.
After eating our lunch (which thankfully did not get eaten by the local dogs) we began piling a steaming pile of mulch onto the 800 trees we’d just finished planting. There’s always one, and it was my good fortune to be handed the world’s squeakiest wheelbarrow to help shift it. I did figure out though, that if you held it at a very precise 45 degree angle to the right, the squeaking stopped (with a heavy barrow full of mulch, that’s easier said than done).
As you can imagine, after planting 20 trees and barrowing 2 tonnes of mulch, my muscles spent the weekend protesting. It was all worth it though because the 800 trees we planted will help to absorb two tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. You can find out more about Trees for Cities, including how you can get involved with their work, on their website: http://www.treesforcities.org/
There’s more pictures over on our facebook page too: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152868901692158.1073741833.10397392157&type=1
