It’s National Tree Week, the UK’s largest tree planting celebration, marking the start of the winter planting season. There are various opportunities across Oxford and Oxfordshire to get involved: Oxford Friends of the Earth are planting 400 trees in Botley on 5 and 6 December; Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon will be planting the first phase of their orchard in late January or early February; and Banbury Trees has received 950 saplings from the ‘I Dig Trees’ scheme which will be planted at a local park.
Following our tree planting event at Sunnymead last year, this year the city council’s parks department decided that North Oxford’s parks have reached capacity – there are sufficient new trees for now. So, instead of planting saplings, we have been encouraging our members to plant seeds, to grow into saplings that can then be planted in a year or two.
We were delighted to donate 100 native tree seeds to Cutteslowe Primary School – with thanks to Harvest at Home who offered us the seeds and Banbury Trees who collected and passed them on following their seed planting event.
With help from their Forest School coordinator, Cutteslowe school children from early years to year 6 planted the seeds which included acorns, chestnuts, hazelnuts, birch, and hornbeam. The children sent us this message: “We all look forward to looking after our seeds, watching them grow and then one day we will plant them in the ground :)”
Thank you Cutteslowe Primary School! We look forward to hearing how your seeds grow and (if needed) will help you find good homes for them when they’re big enough.
