Do you have areas or patches of ground near you that look a bit brown or even grey? Well maybe you need to have a go at our new greening activity!
As part of our ‘My Local Area’ set of resources, this activity takes you through all you need to get going with greening an area near you, but even better you could also win £250 for your school or youth group to put towards purchasing plants and gardening equipment!
What is greening?
The concept of greening is simple. You identify an area of land (that you have permission to do something with) where additional plant and trees can be grown, and then you grow them. The trickier part is to work out what would be best to plant, how to plant them and how to care for that area in the future.
Our activity gives guidance on all this along with some other helpful links to help you along the way. We suggest starting with a biodiversity survey, so that you know what creatures live there and what is missing. This will help identify the plants and trees you need to grow to encourage wildlife in that area.
Is there space for a tree?
Trees help to create the oxygen we breathe and regulate our climate. Tragically, they are being destroyed at an alarming rate. At the 2020 World Economic Forum, Dr. Jane Goodall announced her commitment to contributing 5 million trees (via replanting or restoration) in the next year to the 1 Trillion Trees campaign (www.1t.org). Here at Roots & Shoots we know that even the smallest of positive actions can make a difference, so we’d love it if you can make space for a tree (or even two) as part of your local greening!
Enter the competition
To support you in your planting activity, we are offering prize money of £250 to give to the groups who come up with a plan most beneficial to their local area!
- Do the survey and make your plans as part of the greening activity, and take some photos along the way.
- Upload the details of your activity to our website and at the end of each term we’ll announce a winner – If you haven’t already, you can register your group here: www.rootsnshoots.org.uk/sign-me-up.
Each entry also counts towards our Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots Awards. Don’t forget to include details of the number and type of any trees that you plant so that we can keep track of them for the 1 Trillion Trees project (www.1t.org)!