Tag: poe tree

Audley School’s Trip to the Farm – Glebe Farm Park!

As heavy clouds loomed over Glebe Farm Park Recreation Ground, Btfl, Year Four, Audley School children and Mandy Ross, children’s author and poet donned our raincoats and marched down to Glebe Farm Recreation Ground with gusto. We weren’t going to let the threat of heavy rain put us off – and it didn’t.

Year four pupils from Audley School looking for tree seeds
Year four pupils from Audley School at Glebe Farm Park

BTfL had the honour of enjoying a morning with Audley School children learning about trees, nature and the River Cole with Mandy, Birmingham based, Arts Practitioner who led a workshop with the children celebrating nature at Glebe Farm Recreation Ground.

We started our workshop on the short walk to Glebe Farm Recreation Ground, asking the children about their tree memories…

‘My favourite tree is the one with the blue rope that we swing from.’

 ‘I love my Grandparents apple tree, Granddad picks the apples, Nan makes an apple pie.’

‘There is a small tree, I climb into where I can watch bikes and cars racing by.’

 ‘I loved the climbing tree in Sutton Park, I would climb it every time I visited the park, it’s not there anymore.

 ‘My Grandma has a fig tree, but the weather is too cold here so it doesn’t grow.’

Listening to the children’s tree memories was a poignant introduction to the workshop and on our journey to the site we pointed out trees, seeds on the floor and tree roots pushing though slabbed pathways. At the site, we quickly spotted the trees planted by children at Audley School and BTfL over the last eight years. Children were quick to realize that maybe those trees had been planted by older brothers and sisters in previous years.

Standing amongst the young forest, the children were amazed to learn that the trees planted with BtfL and Audley School were the same age as the children and that those trees and the children would grow together! We all stood quietly on the banks of the River Cole and listened to the swishing of trees in the wind and the gentle flow of the River. Asked to describe the river the children, said, ‘wet, mucky, aqua brown, calm, a home for ducks, muddy, flowing!’

Year four pupils from Audley School at the River Cole
Mandy Ross, teaching students about trees planted by BTfL and Audley School

Learning the names of the trees and the connection between the trees and the River Cole was inspiring to the children. We collected, seeds, conkers, leaves and acorns and the children loved the tactile quality of nature. Feeling the spikey conker shells, crunchy leaves and beautiful shiny conkers they were inspired to think about nature. With rosy cheeks glowing from being outside and embracing the elements we walked back to school full of chatter about trees!

Back in class the children were itching to get creative – and so they did. Drawings and quotes inspired by us imagining being a tree or a river, what season we loved, what we felt and saw from nature’s perspective.

Sharing thoughts and feelings about nature and nature’s perspective, enjoying the rhythm of the poem rather than rhyme!

All the children were eager to engage and what followed was a wonderfully imaginative creative poem – and best of all it was a group effort!

 

 

Audley School Year Four Poem

In the city, by the river, here we planted emerald trees.

Willow, Oak and prickly Hawthorne, juicy berries, swishy grass.

In the Autumn, by the river leaves are getting brown and crunchy.

Falling slowly in glimmering water, flowing gently to the sea.

In the summer, by the river, sun is shining on the trees.

And on water, people bringing picnics under shady trees.

In our forest by the river, we protect the baby trees,

To grow with sun and rain and soil, homes for owls, pigeons and squirrels.

The workshop was inspiring, we all agreed and made us think about nature which is always around us, always embracing us. We hope the children were left with a closer bond and a bigger love for nature.

From their enthusiasm, creativity and questions it’s clear the Year Four children of Audley Primary School in Stetchford already had that. And we hope that their passion for the natural world in their neighbourhood continues and grows like the beautiful trees we planted eight years ago.

By Justine Marklew

Trees Join Earth and Sky   Mandy Ross

 

Here are tree memories from many different audience members at the Return to Nature Festival. Tree memories turned in a poignant, heartwarming, beautiful collective poem. We celebrate trees, we celebrate words, we celebrate with each other! 

Collective poem, Return to Nature Festival, Holders Woods, 14 Sept 2019

 

Trees and woods join earth and sky.
Remember a tree? Tell us where? And why?

We ran down the hill, faster and faster,
but we knew which trees would stop us falling.

The tree in our grandparents’ garden
had a bench round the trunk for summer picnics.

We planted a tree to remember my baby sister, Freya.
Now every time we go to my dad’s boxing club, we water it.

Lost trees: a mature oak with her daughters surrounding her,
at the top of Shirley Park. Now all gone, victims of ‘progress.’

Nana’s apple tree, a worm in every apple.

Maybe Grandad will make cider.

Every year we roast chestnuts from the chestnut tree,
eat them hot, share them with our neighbours.

Planting baby trees in a snowy park
to remember our friend Jo, much missed.

Watching the cricket with Dad, under the shade
of the spreading horse chestnut in Kings Heath Park.

Oak after beautiful oak on Offa’s Dyke.The grace and ruggedness of trees,
solid, majestic and beautiful. Always inspired…

In Swedish myth, an ash, Yggdrasil is ‘the tree of the world’,
holding up the whole universe. Though most trees in Sweden are conifers.

An oak tree in the playground.
We climbed it to get away from the caretaker, who chased us.

A huge lychee tree long ago in our garden in Goa. The seed came from Macao.
It never gave us lychees, but all my cousins remember climbing it.

I had a Christmas tree as a kid. It moved house with us twice.

Ann remembers a den inside a willow tree, the scent of mock orange floating over.

Fraser hugs a tree in Moseley Bog. Too big to reach all the way around.
Jasmine runs round her apple tree twenty times to help the apples grow.

A wonderful beech tree near our house,
constantly changing, magnificent, home to many birds.
My mother lies beneath a beautiful carob tree. My father visited her there often.
‘I couldn’t have found a better place,’ he said.

Trees and woods join us to each other, and earth and sky.
Remember a tree? Tell us where? And why?

Return to Nature – We Certainly Did!

The BTfL team arrived at Holders Lane Wood in Moseley on the morning of September the 14th to join Forward Arts in celebrating the Return to Nature Festival. The sun light dappled through the beautiful canopy of trees that were overhead and it was beautifully serene.

As likeminded, groups, charities and individuals set up their stalls around in a large circle amongst the woods we had a feeling it was going to be a great day – and we were right!

There was a whole range of eco-themed activities, entertainment for the whole family to enjoy and participate in. Environmental arts, music, writing, craft, nature trails, story-telling, inspiring talks, delicious food and a wonderfully progressive community atmosphere.

The day was full of joy, laughter, and a wonderful sense of community. Hundreds of people visited the festival for the same simple thing – to enjoy everything nature had to offer.

A perfect setting with the last sunshine of summer shining down on us all day long. At BTfL we enjoyed collaborating with children and adults alike about the thrill and the importance of tree planting. How we should celebrate trees and enjoy everything they had to offer.

It didn’t take long before we had countless children and grown-ups making small plant pots made from recycled newspaper donning our stall, each with an individual acorn planted. Some people wrote a small message on the pot of their newly planted acorn, such as, ‘Happy Birthday Acorn!’

While most people who planted, an acorn were eager to take it home and grow it themselves, others who lived in flats and apartments or had very small gardens left their pots in our capable hands. BTfL has promised to nurture these newly planted trees and nurture them we will.

We also brought an array of fruit and vegetables to show where seeds came from, what kind of seeds there were, including coffee, peppers, apricots strawberries and of course chocolate! Unsurprisingly the chocolate got a lot of interest!

Our seed collecting walk with Simon Needle, Principal Arboriculturist/Principal Ecologist was a brilliant way of learning lots of weird and wonderful facts about trees too. We were all captivated with one of our audience saying the talk, ‘blew his mind!’

Then we were back to our stall to help people celebrate their ideas and memories about trees with, Mandy Ross, a Community Arts Practitioner, poet and children’s author based in Birmingham who loves that we live in such a beautifully green city. Mandy inspired each person to share their personal tree memory with us. To celebrate each tree story, we encouraged each of our new poets to peg their poetry on our own BTfL tree.

Mandy then built a wonderfully rhythmic poem, funny, heart-warming and poignant with many of our mini poets’ memories and personal stories about trees – to celebrate trees with a Poe-Tree! The Poe-Tree was then performed in front of an audience who from the cheers and the claps at the end reading really enjoyed it.

We would like to say a huge thank you to @ForwardArts for organising a wonderful festival celebrating the natural world. We would be there again next year in a heartbeat!  If there is a festival next year, fingers crossed!