Last year Convivio made a commitment to support tree-planting, to play our part in helping to save the planet.
This is the pledge we made:
- three percent of our profits to support tree-planting;
- three days each per year to help plant and prune;
- make our tech to be climate neutral.
At the beginning of March this year, 2020, we worked on the first two of those in particular — we went to plant some trees and donated £3,000!
Tree-planting in the Heart of England
I live in the Birmingham. Just a few miles south of the city in the Warwickshire countryside is the Heart of England Forest project.
The project aims to plant, protect and preserve a huge broadleaf forest across the heart of England, stretching from the ancient Forest of Arden, south to the edge of the Vale of Evesham.
The Heart of England Forest has an exciting and ambitious vision. We’re planting tomorrow’s great native woodland, one tree at a time. A new broadleaf forest across the heart of the country that’s for everyone to enjoy.
On a Friday in early March, before Coronavirus had spread too far, several of us met up in a small hamlet called Newnham in the beautiful Warwickshire countryside, not too far from Stratford-upon-Avon.
The Heart of England Forest have several acres of land at Newnham ready for planting a new section of forest.
We joined a number of other volunteers to form a planting team. The aim was to plant around 1,500 trees in a day, between the whole squad.
Though it started out cold, we were fortunate to have a beautiful day. The sun warmed us up quickly and shone on the planting team all day.
This section of planting was to follow a new plan, albeit a somewhat experimental one, agreed by the Heart of England Forest team with the Forestry Commission — none of the young trees here were to be planted with a plastic sheath. They believed that the loss of shoots to herbivore grazing would be small enough to make the plastic sheaths obsolete, and planting without them would both reduce their dependency on plastic and speed up the rate of planting at the same time.
We planted the new saplings in clusters of 50–60 trees, each a metre or so apart. The idea of the clusters, apparently, is to support growth of other vegetation at lower heights, to encourage the movement of wildlife in between, and to welcome human visitors to enjoy roaming in the forest. We were planting mostly British oaks on our day, but planting teams on other days through the season focussed on other species in different sections of land around Newnham.
By the end of the day, tired but very proud, we had reach the planting target and all the saplings were happily in the ground.
Sustained support for tree-planting in the Heart of England
We also combined our planting day with making our financial donation.
It would’ve been lovely to have a handing-over ceremony with one of those outsized cheques. Sadly, it was just an electronic bank transfer, so there’s not so much to show or say.
However, we’re very proud to have given more than just a day of our combined sweat:
Our donation paid for the planting and care of the same number of trees as were planted that day — enacting our Three for Trees commitment this year we have provided for a whole field of British oak, through paying for the saplings, planting them, and funding their lifetime of care.
We’ve been able to give some financial support to help the Heart of England Forest maintain its stewardship of the Warwickshire countryside, and to sustain the impact of tree-growth in this small section of England on saving the planet.
When the Coronavirus pandemic allows, we look forward to going back to Newnham and other sections of the Heart of England Forest project, in other seasons, when we’ll do some more work to help the growing trees. When we do, we’ll have another update and some more photos.
And we look forward to seeing our little new plantation in Newnham grow over the years. We’ll go back later in its life to visit our little field and help with the maintenance.
Convivio helps organisations to work better for people.
We do this mainly by helping them transform their services using digital tools, but also by spreading new ways of working.
Read our blog: blog.weareconvivio.com
Follow us on twitter: @weareconvivio
Get in touch: hello@weareconvivio.com
Visit our website at weareconvivio.com
