Today’s visit to Queen’s Park was a rescheduled planting that we had to call off previously due to heavy snowfall, but this time the weather was generally kind to us and we even saw the sun later in the day. The task we were tackling today was the planting of between 50 and 70 large standard trees but there was a challenge involved. Each team of volunteers had to identify a tree in the storage facility and then read a map to find out where its location would be, move it to the location (no mean feat!) and dig a deep meter diameter planting hole!  Their next task was to position the tree in the center of the hole, backfill with soil, stake the tree and finally place mulch (bark chippings) around the base….. then, select another tree and start again!

You can see that we had plenty of work to do and we are grateful to our partners in this project,  Trees for Cities, who mobilised 30+ volunteers from various companies to assist us.
First to start planting were a small group of pupils from the adjacent Baskerville School. They are always keen to help out whenever we are in Queens Park.
They were followed by members of staff from RSM UK, Eversheds, Clear Channel and finally members of the FCO Chevening Scholarship Programme.
We aroused a lot of interest with local residents who were keen to see more trees in Queens Park and promised to keep a watchful eye on them. Representatives of one of our funders came along as well, to experience one of our plantings.

 

 

 

 

It was a long day but by 3pm everyone had finished their allotted tasks. We make no excuses for the large number of photographs in our album today as you can see, via this link that there was a lot going on! Our thanks to the volunteers who all worked so hard today to achieve a great result.