Our wonderful friends at the Woodland Trust have a great scheme most years, giving out hedge and woodland packs of little tree whips (that's really small saplings) to schools and community groups. This year, they have stepped it up a notch for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, providing more trees and also including a Royal Oak.
We have wanted a hedge alongside the allotment boundary with the carpark for a while, so we jumped at the chance to get this lovely freebie. That meant that today, we needed to plant about 100 trees to make the hedge nice and thick. It will be great for wildlife when it grows.
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| Robert Shaw pupils get stuck into planting |
We knew it was likely to freeze, so we prepared the area for the hedge and mulched it with clippings well ahead of time, so that when the planting came, we just needed to rake the mulch to the side and plant in the protected soil. We were helped in this by Councillor Saghir, who arrived and set to work with a will, which was much appreciated.
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| Councillor Saghir lends a hand |
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| I've planted six! |
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| These trees aren't very big! |
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| Is there really a mouse living behind the board? |
The other year 5 class from Robert Shaw arrived to help us plant the trees, and soon got stuck in. We aimed for the pupils to plant at least 4 trees each and they quickly managed that, some going on to plant far more, and some bulbs as well. The group also found some interesting archaeology - which they took back to school to investigate. We gave out instant hot-packs to help pupils warm up, but also made use of the heat of composting to help thaw everyone's feet. We finished off with a round of warm apple juice with cinnamon to help unfreeze fingers as well.
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| Finished! |
Thanks to all from Robert Shaw - you did really well in difficult conditions.
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| Archaeology - part of a glass sweet dish? |
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| More archaelogy, and a mystery root |
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Composting hedge clippings get nice and warm.
Just the thing for warming cold toes! |
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