10000 Children - 10000 Trees - For You

Come rain, sun or snow, every weekday for the past 3 weeks, November 15th to December 2nd, children and teachers from schools across Andover and the surrounding villages have participated in our 10th year of school tree planting!

Supported by local businesses, our amazing team of volunteers and with your help, another 1000 children have planted 500 more trees, bringing the total since the start of November to 950. Our community day on December 11th will take us to 1000!

Great work everyone, especially the children from our partner tree planting schools:

• Endeavour Primary Schools, King & Kirk
• Winton Community Academy
• Portway Junior School
• Balksbury Junior School
• Anton Junior School
• Harrow Way Community School
• Abbotts Ann Primary School
• Vernham Dean Gillums Primary School
• Hurstbourne Tarrant CE Primary School
• Rookwood School
• Andover College
• John Hanson Community School
• Knights Enham Junior School
• Icknield School
• Wolverdene School
• Roman Way County Primary School
• Vigo Primary School
• Appleshaw Saint Peter's Church of England Primary School
• St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School, Andover
• Kimpton, Thruxton And Fyfield Church Of England Primary School
• Wherwell Primary School

 Other late summer and autumn news…

We continue to welcome new volunteers to help care for the wood and tend the wildflowers and young trees on the allotment.

On September 21^st, we were once more able to gather to celebrate International Peace Day with a procession and the first tree planting of the season.

Over the past few months, regular maintenance work has included weeding out invasive plants from the wildlife pond, checking and mending the deer fence and replacing damaged signs.

As the days shortened and temperatures dropped (even though only slightly), we were able to start the annual programme of “beating up” (replacing whips and young trees that have died).

At the late October community ‘helping hands’ weekend, we began landscaping the arboretum to increase the diversity of habitats, to increase wildlife biodiversity and create a ‘habitats trail’ area to be used as a learning in nature space. We planted the hundreds of wildflowers we raised from seed around the trees and introduced mounds and hollows into the central area that will be sown with meadow flower and grass seed in early spring next year. The undulations will create pockets of different microclimates perfect for invertebrates like butterflies. We also introduced a ‘chalk scrape’, where the top soil has been scraped back to reveal the chalk bedrock - another habitat for the trail that will allow rare chalk flowers to grow upon. And, after months of planning, we finally began excavating our new pond extension.

This weekend, December 4^th and 5^th, groundworks have been carried out by a hardworking team of volunteers, who excavated trenches and laid the pipework that will carry the rainwater runoff from the newly installed roof on the woodland classroom to the pond, ensuring that it is topped up all year round.

By the time we report back to you again, the winter will be coming to a close, the schools that could not join us over the past few weeks due to staff illness will have (hopefully) brought several hundred more children to plant the last section of wildlife hedgerow and our ten thousandth child will have planted the ten thousandth tree. It is thanks to your generosity that we are close to achieving our target. So, from us all, Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays and THANK YOU.

With weekly and monthly volunteering sessions having resumed, although still with Covid security measures in place, routine, seasonal work in Harmony Woods is once again being carried out by a committed team of volunteers of all ages. Trees have been checked, wildflowers sown and the more invasive plants such as ragwort thinned out.

Your donations do not only help us to bring children to the wood to plant their trees every winter; this summer, for the first time, we have been able to welcome groups of school children and college students to the wood to experience what their collective efforts have made possible. You have also helped us to set up a graduate internship programme. This report shares with you some of these first summer visits and the achievements of our ecologist intern, Alex. You will read about the exploits of the youth team and an update of what is now living in Harmony Woods. 

Harmony In Nature: Exchange update 

In June, the Andover Trees United Youth Team had a camping trip in Harmony Woods, where they undertook a bat survey and they also set-up a moth trap. Previously they had carried out various day-time based activities - tree identification, wildflower and bird surveys and setting camera traps - however, the team were really interested to see what sort of wildlife they would find at night! 

The results were very exciting; we identified several species of moth, which are new to our records, including the very cool buff-tip moth. And we can also now say for certain that there are bats present in Harmony Woods! 

The data collected goes towards ATU's on-going wildlife monitoring database and will be shared with national databases, too.

Gombe 60 & Appleshaw St Peter’s C of E Primary School: the importance of community-based conservation 

20th July marked 61 years since Jane Goodall travelled from England to what is now Tanzania and ventured into the little-known world of wild chimpanzees. Dr Goodall went on to make ground-breaking discoveries that changed our scientific understanding of primates and their close relationship to human-beings. 

Dr Goodall also realised that the chimpanzees and their habitat needed protecting and it became clear that collaboration with local communities was key to this protection. Her work redefined traditional conservation with an approach that recognised the central role people play in the well-being of animals and habitat. This empowering approach to conservation is now carried out in communities across the world. 

Andover Trees United has been working in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute's Roots & Shoots programme for many years, helping to foster a new generation of conservationists through the empowerment of young people to lead on local action. As part of the (delayed) Gombe 60 celebrations and in collaboration with Andover Trees United, Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots programme sponsored local Andover schools to take part in conservation activities at Harmony Woods. 

Year 1 & 2 pupils from Appleshaw St Peter’s C of E Primary School have been the first to engage with the Gombe 60 celebration programme when they visited Harmony Woods in June. The children spent time with interning ecologist, Alex Marshall where they were introduced to basic field study techniques and learnt how to identify trees, wildflowers, birds and insects. The same group returned to the woods again in July to carry out further studies and revisit their trees planted in previous years. Appleshaw Primary class teacher, Mrs Preece said “the site looked stunning with all the wildflowers and the children were really engaged. They especially loved being real scientists gathering data using the quadrats.”

Project ecologist, Alex Marshall said “summer is the best time of year for the children to discover living species in Harmony Woods. The wildflower meadow is in full bloom, the insects are buzzing, the Skylarks are singing and the children get a completely different experience to the tree planting season during the winter which can be pretty cold and wet.” 

Here's what some of the children had to say about their visit, which you as a GlobalGiving donor to our project have helped make possible:

Wildflowers and Butterflies

As July ends and the Sainfoin and Ox-eye Daisies go to seed, the Harmony Woods wildflower meadow has turned to a beautiful mixture of yellows and purples with Lady’s Bedstraw, Bird’s-foot Trefoil, Knapweed and Scabious. A favourite wildflower at the moment is the Scabious. This year we have seen three species of Scabious, two more than identified last year: Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis), Small Scabious (Scabiosa columbaria) and Devil’s-bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis)

Our regular Sparsholt College work experience student has taken over the data collection from our Butterfly Conservation transect. It is a great way for him to complete his course homework, improving his butterfly ID skills. He has recorded lots of different species including the Ringlet, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Large White, Marbled White and Small Skipper. 

Bug Hunt! 

July 17th saw an Invertebrate Search event, part of our ecologist-led ongoing citizen science opportunities with the Nature in Harmony project. Volunteers of all ages came to Harmony Woods to help collect more data on the invertebrates living in the woods. 97% of all animal species on earth are invertebrates so, as you can imagine, we didn’t have to look very hard before finding any! 

We had set 6 pitfall traps in the woods the night before - providing us with many large ground beetles and black spiders to identify. We saw lots of butterflies and species of hoverflies, huge dragonflies and tiny blue damselflies, centipedes, millipedes, worms, and snails. And it seems that Harmony Woods is a hotspot for woodlice and earwigs! 

When next we report to you, we will be in the throes of preparing for the 10th tree plant and getting ready to receive the 10,000th young person to Harmony Woods. It is your generous donations that will be making this possible and for this we say a massive and heartfelt THANK YOU! 

Links:

• Nature in Harmony webpage
• John Muir Award