Tree Planting Fortnight 2019

From November 18th - 29th, we hosted our 8th annual Tree Planting Fortnight. Where members of the local community and just under 1000 pupils from 22 surrounding schools participated in the planting of 500 new British native trees in Harmony Woods.
This number of trees is expected to increase to 1000 when combined with the additional tree planting that will happen in the early months of 2020 as part of community workdays, a Plant-For-The-Planet academy, a few more schools planting days and the continuation of the beating up programme (replacing trees that were unsuccessful in the previous 3 years).

As always, lot’s of helping hands will be needed and we’re always looking for new volunteers to join the team! If you’d like to get involved in future tree planting, please keep an eye on our events calendar or contact us here.

Speaking of volunteers, we had a fantastic team of helpers this year who worked from the daily set up at 8am each day, through till the last tools had been put away 7 hours later! In total, 60 different people gave their time in the wood over the course of the fortnight to help the sessions run smoothly and to support the children to plant their trees. This 60 includes returning volunteers and new recruits, employees from Abel and Cole, the British Army, the Coop Depot, college students and secondary school students from Harrow Way and Winton who came to plant their own trees as well as support the younger primary school children. Invited guests and VIPs included the Mayor of Test Valley Cllr Martin Hatley, Cllr Phil North, Director of Woodland Creation for the Woodland Trust John Tucker and Lorna Cumming-Bruce from Semble.

A great variety of British native tree species acquired from the Woodland Trust and TCV’s #IDigTrees programme were planted this year, these include:

• Field Maple

• Rowan

•  Oak

•  Alder

• Aspen

• Silver Birch

• Downy Birch

• Hawthorn

• Hazel                                

• Crab Apple

• Dogwood

• Goat Willow

• Grey Willow

• Holly

• Wild Cherry

• Bird Cherry

• Hornbeam

• Beech

Thanks to a grant from The Tree Council, we were able to acquire 25 Dutch-elm-disease resistant Elm trees, one for each of our partner schools.

You can see photos and read more detail in our blog post here.