10000 Children - 10000 Trees - For You

Late summer…

September saw us holding a Covid-secure AGM, split over 2 days – a walk in the woods hosted by the Nature in Harmony Exchange project students, who demonstrated field study techniques to ‘bubbles’ of visitors who in turn took part in a socially-distanced bioblitz, and a formal online meeting.

Despite the challenges of the year, we still celebrated International Peace Day on behalf of UN Ambassador for Peace Jane Goodall and her Roots & Shoots programme, planting an oak tree to commemorate the day. We could not welcome the 100s of young people as in previous years but two very special youngsters got up especially early to stop by on their way to school to hang up peace doves and plant the oak.

October saw the wild flowers, propagated at home during lockdown, planted into the meadow and was otherwise filled with the usual work days and behind the scenes admin, necessary for caring for the wood and planning for the all-important children’s planting fortnight.

The start of winter and our annual children’s tree planting fortnight – with a difference!

From November 16th to 27th, thanks to your support, we held our 9th annual Tree Planting Fortnight in Harmony Woods - two weeks of tree planting that has been established in the Andover school calendar since 2012. 

Despite restrictions caused by the pandemic, children and young people from ten of the twenty-six tree-planting schools were still able to make their way to Harmony Woods over the fortnight. The remaining sixteen schools hope to join us in the new year. Fingers crossed!

During the fortnight, 21 British native ‘standard-sized’ (about 3m tall) trees and 250 tree whips were planted by the 10 school groups and volunteers from the community. Fifty of the whips were brought by the children themselves from their school nursery beds; some of the older children also planted not just their own standard tree, but a tree for children from one of the schools who couldn’t be there. Local adults stepped up to plant for the children as well – a fitting response, given that our local children have been planting for them for the past 8 years!

The standard trees have been planted to create a mini arboretum and British native tree walk, one tree for each school and each hung with a hand-sculpted name label. The 21 were added to during National Week, which in the UK this year ran from 26^th November to 5^th December. Three more trees were planted by students, families and friends on behalf of their schools and a Whitebeam was planted by the ATU youth team, supported by Test Valley Mayor, Cllr Hatley. Dedicated to people everywhere in a year that has been filled with both joy and profound sadness, the planting of the community Whitebeam on the 5th symbolises a time to reflect on the year, the generosity and kindnesses of community, and the lives lost and lives changed over. While the whole arboretum is dedicated to all the lives affected by the 2020 pandemic, some schools have also dedicated their own arboretum tree to a special member of their own community.

In spring 2021, the arboretum will grow even further with the creation of a wildflower meadow and chalk scrape (scraping back the top layer of soil to reveal the bare chalk earth beneath, encouraging a diversity of chalk-loving plants). Chalk wildflowers will be sowed in the centre of the looped walk, and the pond will be extended.  As the new arboretum takes shape, we are able to look forwards with hope to better times.

Keep planting…!

On this week’s Monday workday, the team were joined as usual by students from the town and 200 more trees were planted in the form of mixed hedgerow. We will continue to tree plant, with the young people in our own community for young people everywhere, over January and February to ensure that the promised 1000 trees all go into the ground before the end of winter.

A huge THANK YOU goes out to you all for your wonderful support, without which this work would not be possible. With the additional costs incurred to run Covid-secure workdays and the need to pay for more transport to bring the children to the wood (more buses needed to maintain ‘bubbles’), your donations have meant more than ever. We wish you a safe and peaceful Christmas and send you hopes for a healthy new year.