Tree, er sorry that should be three, is the magic number, as three Newcastle GoodGymers made their way to Gateshead for a tree-mendous tree planting task. It could hardly have been a more appropriate day for this task - International Day of Forests!

It was our second time helping Earthwatch Europe with their Tiny Forests tree-planting project. Tiny Forests brings the benefits of woodland right into the heart of our cities and urban spaces: connecting people with nature, helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change, as well as providing nature-rich habitat to support urban wildlife. Today's forest was in Gateshead in the appropriately named Windmill Hill area - there was a definite breeze accompanying us today.

We started with an introduction and tree-planting demo from Claire and Sam. Claire explained that they use an unusual method named after Japanese botanist Miyawaki. The trees are planted only 30cm apart. This has particular benefits on the tree canopy, the rate of growth and the light inside the forest, thus helping to attract birds, butterflies, bees and beetles! Some of the trees also have tags attached to facilitate the research component of Earthwatch in order to track the development of all the forests. It was important to make sure that the tags remained above ground!

Earthwatch Europe teamed up with local partners Living Woods. They're based in the North East but planning to expand. They're dedicated to the creation and sustainable management of woodland by supporting and empowering local people to create and care for woodland in and around their communities. Their team members Lorna and Mark are always looking for volunteers. They seemed very interested in recruiting GoodGym to help at some point. In the mean time, if you'd like to help, find them here Living Woods

The team had already had a session this morning, accompanied by local school children so there were already some trees planted in the 200m squared site. Our task was to finish the job, making it 600 trees planted in the day. With some other volunteers we finished the job in not much more than an hour! Amazing!

As well as International Day of Forests, it's also World Poetry Day today, so I'll finish with a poem to tell you the names of some of the trees we planted!

It’s poetry day, I’ll end with a poem Our first species of tree, that one’s a rowan

My rhyming’s not good, you could call it prose The next tree you’ll find is the pretty dog rose

Did we get stuck in, we did by golly Christmas festooning - how about some holly?

As always GoodGym sent out a great team Look out for catkins from the tall hornbeam

Over the years we can watch them all grow Maybe your favourite will be the goat willow

Dig in the soil and give it a poke Make way for the super strong sessile oak

Volunteers alike had a really fine time As we planted some sweet yellow green small leaved lime!