A festive welcome

On a chilly but bright December morning, we met in Ockwells Park car park. It was great to see Sara and Laura again and we were delighted to welcome 6 new faces - Kacey, Nicola, Shabina, Jenny, Esther and Sonia. Extra kudos to all of you for not rapidly re-tree-ting home on meeting Area Activator Amy for the first time, who was decked out like a Christmas tree and covered in mud having been for a pre-task run as part of this month's #Magpies150Challenge (read all about that and join the fun here!)

Tree planting not face planting

The group headed off into the beautiful nature reserve, and amazingly made it to the planting site without any face-planting on the very muddy paths. There we met our ex-tree-mely knowledgeable hosts for the session: Jason Mills, who is the Coutryside Manager for RBWM, Alistair Will from Groundwork South, and wildlife conservationist Martin Woolner.

A tree-mendous vision

Jason explained that the planting site was between two areas of ancient woodland - Thrift Wood, which is accessible to walkers from Ockwells Park, and another area privately owned by the neighbouring turf farm. The grand plan is to fill in the gap between the two, creating a corridor of wonderful biodiversity-boosting, oxygen-giving, carbon-absorbing woodland to benefit generations to come. The acorn harvesting and planting GoodGym did with Alistair earlier in the year was part of the same project.

Creating a woodland is by no means quick or easy. The trees planted last Winter did not thrive due to the incredibly dry Spring this year, and we know that it will take decades if not centuries for the new wood to resemble the older areas, but it was great to hear from Jason that the benefit to wildlife will be felt far sooner. As soon as the saplings grow leaves in the Spring they will provide food and shelter to creatures like caterpillars, butterflies and moths, which will have positive ripple effects.

Our job today was two-fold: planting trees, and 'heeling in' bundles of trees to keep their roots moist for planting out over the rest of the season. We were working with a variety of species including hazel, elder, willow, dogwood, spindle, hawthorn, and blackthorn.

Well-heeled

Jenny, Amy and Laura tackled the heeling in, which involved digging trenches where handfuls of dormant saplings were then 'tucked in to bed' - their delicate roots carefully covered in soil to keep them from drying out, and their wispy trunks set at an angle to protect them from the elements. The digging warmed us up, and we look forward to returning to settle these babies in their permanent homes over the coming weeks.

Budding conservationists

The rest of the team were on tree planting duty, joined also by Laura, who branched out after a spell in the trenches. Efforts were focussed on planting thornier species towards the edges of the site, which will grow up to be a natural protective barrier along the edge of the wood, like we can see now surrounding Thrift Wood. Everyone seemed to find the task very enjoyable. As Amy came round to take photos there were big smiles, jubilant reports of how many trees had been planted, and expert demonstrations of how to curl a protective barrier around the tree to keep the rabbits off. Be-leaf it or not, we planted approximately 140 trees today - go team!

Too much fun to leaf...

During the session the sun shone, feet and gloves became increasingly caked in mud, and it felt like no time at all before it was time to make like a tree and....leaf. A huge thank you to Alistair, Jason and Martin for welcoming us and sharing your knowledge.

Many of us left wanting more, so the good news is that there are at least another 860 trees to plant! We have further community missions here planned for the next two Thursdays. You can sign up for 10am on the 10th here or 10am on the 17th here.

We also have lots of other great activities planned for the coming weeks, and you can check out the full listings here.

Hope to see some of you there!