Tag: woodthorpe junior and infant school

Being Kind Is The Key – To Our Environment!

Well today we planted 500 whips at Dawberry Fields Park with local school Woodthorpe Junior And Infant School. 13 pupils  from years one to five who were all wearing an impressive and colourful array of boots and wellies came with kindness as their cause.

We also welcomed  the Green Team back into the BTfL fold. And 12 wonderful volunteers from the Green team at  Deutsche Bank came to help us plant the trees. We hadn’t seen them for two years and it was lovely to re-connect, enjoy the beautiful sunshine together and green up the local area. Quite a special year for both of us, and while we are getting ever nearer to our 100,000th tree planted in March, the Green team are also enjoying their the ten year anniversary, so lots to celebrate!

Once again as part of the QGC celebrations every tree planted is part of the Queens Platinum Jubilee we had the local Deputy Lieutenant join us, Elizabeth Foster, Deputy Lieutenant who made history by being the first female DL to have a uniform to perform the duties in. Elizabeth explained to the children that the Queen didn’t  want gifts for her platinum jubilee, but for anyone who can – to plant tree. Well we gifted 500 to the Queen today as well as to the local area, local wildlife, local people and local air supply! So its a win win!

The children dug deep and plotted the trees in the five large circles outlined for them to plant in, native trees, at least three feet apart, there was lots measuring the area in the super cool wellies and carefully planting the trees to ensure they at comfortably and securely in the ground.

  

This half-term pupils have been adopting kindness to everything and everyone. Today, of course it was their local park’s turn to enjoy some of the kindness. As the headteacher explained, kindness is something we enocourage all the time,  but not just to people to our world too. By being more sustainable, learning how to care more for our environment and what bette way to do this than to plant some trees today – together!

All of the children are local to the area and  regularly enjoy their lovely green space, Dawberry Fields. They were so happy to be planting the trees today and were so happy to tell everyone when they got home and they were asked by their parents what did you do today, maths…, english…, they could reply we planted lots  and lots of trees!

    

Most of the children use the park and were eager to bring their parents to the park to show them where they trees had been planted and eager to visit and watch them grow over the years.

As Deutsche Bank and the children worked in great teams of threes and fours, student Willow working with Tim from the Green Team seemed to be gelling really well – ‘we are dad and daughter,’ Tim explained.   I only realised today that I would be planting trees with my daughter – so it’s really lovely. It was a wonderful coincidence. Tim and Willow promised to come back and look out for their trees when they regularly visit the park.

Finding an acorn on one of the trees sign planted one student was very excited and this led to a discussion about how squirrels are the best tree planters on the planet, burying their acorns and forgetting where they are leaving the acorns to grow into,  you guessed it – mighty oaks.                                       The discussion moved on to how boats used to be made of oak and how Henry VIII’s fleet of ships were all made of oak.  Then how Shackleton’s ship Endurance which had sunk in January 1915 in Antarctica has now been discovered and almost perfectly preserved under the sea, and why because it is made of oak!

While we were discussing trees and history a few local residents walking their dogs and babies in the park asked us what we were were doing. After BTfL explained all locale residents were very happy to have more trees in their park. A we understand it the message about the importance of trees is spreading even wider and even stronger with every new day.

   

And talking of Dogs we had a special guest at our planting today, Darwin, a 15-year-old Collie belonging to Simon and Debbie Needle. Darwin brought a smile to all our faces and was exceptionally behaved.

 

And after a lovely morning, we all feel a bit kinder, a bit calmer, a bit prouder, a bit more connected –  and of course all those wonderful boots were a bit muddier – all signs of a great tree planting!

We would like to say a huge thank you to pupils and staff from Woodthorpe Junior and Infant School, the amazing Green Team from Deutsche Bank, Deputy Lieutenant, Liz Foster, Simon Needle, Geoff Cole and Stevie Prior and Leon from the Woodland Team.

Please view the photos from this planting here