By Wendy Davis | Trustee & Project Leader
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:
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 21st, 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 4th and 5th, 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.
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