Tree Warden Update

Spring 2010

IN THIS ISSUE

Election countdown
Alive and very much kicking
Tree Wardens help minister
Hedge Tree Campaign
Welcoming new networks
Mass tree planting
Hunt for Recorders of Year
Championing local trees
Technical update
Tell us your news

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DIARY DATES

Regional forums

The first of our 20th anniversary regional forums takes place on 26 June at Studley Royal in Yorkshire.

It will be hosted by Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and its Tree Wardens plus another Tree Council member, the National Trust.

Trees are one of the glories of the Trust’s Studley Royal estate, which is also the setting for the magnificent ruins of Fountains Abbey.

The choice of date for this Northern forum continues last year’s trend towards a more flexible timetable for the events. In the past they have all tended to be in the autumn.

Other 2010 regional forums are being planned for Suffolk on 19 September, Worcestershire on 10 October and Pembrokeshire on 23 October. Dates have yet to be finalised for forums in East Sussex, East Devon and Leicestershire.  

There will be further information on dates and venues in the next Update, but in the meantime contact your network co-ordinator if you want to register an interest in attending your regional forum. 

Street trees symposium

A one-day symposium, Do street trees have a future? takes place on Wednesday 12 May at University College, London (UCL).

Organised by the UK UNESCO Man and Biosphere Committee’s Urban Forum in collaboration with the Arboricultural Association, UCL Environment Institute and the International Society of Arboriculture, it will call for delegates to share their experiences as a basis for developing a ‘street trees toolkit’ for urban planners.

The aim is to change policy and practice and inform the audience and planners on the actions required to safeguard the future of street trees.

To find out more or book a place visit the UK MAB Urban Forum website (www.ukmaburbanforum.co.uk)

Community Action Programme

Dates for the coming months are:

Tree Care Campaign
March to September 2010



Walk in the Woods
Throughout May 2010



Seed Gathering Season
23 September to 23 October 2010

National Tree Week
27 November to 5 December 2010

Read more

SOURCES OF FUNDS


Neighbours working together

There’s a chance for Tree Wardens to win up to £2,000 in a competition organised by House Beautiful magazine and B&Q. They have teamed up to find the very greenest homes, gardens, streets and community schemes in the UK.

One of the competition’s categories applies to neighbours who've banded together to make their outdoor spaces look better.
The competition closes at midnight on 30 April 2010.  Find out more
 

 

RESOURCES

Opal network

The Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) network (www.opalexplorenature.org) is an exciting new initiative that is open to anyone with an interest in nature.

It aims to create and inspire a new generation of nature-lovers by getting people to explore, study, enjoy and protect their local environment.

If enough Tree Wardens or co-ordinators are interested in finding out more, we can organise a training session. So please let us know if you’d like to be involved.

Opal has a small grant scheme that may be of interest to Tree Warden groups, particularly those who work with young children. Link www.opalexplorenature.org /?q=Societyfunding

The Opal project includes iSpot – an online community that enables members to identify plants and animals. http://www.ispot.org.uk/  Again, if Tree Wardens or co-ordinators are interested we can organise a talk.

Green Up!

A new free guide from the Community Development Foundation  – Green Up! – is designed to help community groups work productively with their councils on environment and sustainability issues. 

It explains how community and volunteer groups can use everything from Local Area Agreements to Sustainable Community Strategies. It also explains words commonly used by councils – to help groups understand ‘council speak’.

The guide, written by Agnes Gautier, gives examples from groups such as local Transition Towns, civic societies and faith groups and tips from group members who are successfully working with their councils.

The guide is available on the CDF website (www.cdf.org.uk/web/ guest/publication?id=142955)

Heritage fruit varieties

Tree Wardens and their communities can obtain many of the heritage varieties of fruit trees (and advice) from orchard groups across the UK. Their details are available from the National Orchard Forum website www.nat-orchard-forum.org.uk

The National Orchard Forum is a voluntary umbrella organisation which represents heritage orchard groups, exchanging information between them and raising awareness of national issues. It also helps to set up groups in parts of the UK where none exist.

Rackham’s ‘Woodlands’

A new hardback edition of Oliver Rackham’s critically-acclaimed Woodlands has just been published by Collins (ISBN: 978 0 00 731514). At £20 it is much cheaper than the original hardback (£25 cheaper), with a newly-designed cover.

When it was first published in 2006 it was hailed by Cotswold Tree Warden Geoffrey Carr in The Tree Guardian as having “the same irresistible can’t-put-it-down effect as a good novel”.

This huge compendium of a book in the New Naturalist series gives a fascinating insight into British trees and woods, based on a lifetime’s knowledge.



 

 Dear Tree Warden
 
This year we are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Tree Council’s Tree Warden Scheme.

What launched in 1990 with only eight local networks has now built up to a fantastic total of 146 in England, Wales and Scotland, with several new ones in the pipeline to be launched later this year. Thank you to everyone who has helped develop this extremely important national initiative into the powerful force of local tree champions it is today.

Thank you also to all who have contributed to this issue. In this and the other two newsletters we are planning for the anniversary year we aim to give a good glimpse of the sort of things you are all achieving, so please keep the information coming in.  And, in this International Year of Biodiversity, it’s important to demonstrate what a vital part trees play in sustaining the variety of our wildlife.

We hope to meet many of you at this year’s regional forums which form a central part of our anniversary celebrations.

Margaret Lipscombe, Director, Urban Programmes
Jon Stokes, Director, Rural Programmes
Election countdown – call to action on trees
With an election on the horizon, Tree Wardens may find it useful to canvass views from their parliamentary candidates on Green Monuments and money for tree planting, says Tree Council director-general Pauline Buchanan Black.

We have drafted some wording that you might find useful as the basis or inspiration for your own letters.  Read more
Alive and very much kicking
In 20 years of Tree Wardening, volunteers have dedicated an amazing total of 22 million hours to their communities’ trees – worth nearly £154 million at today’s volunteer rate. That amounts to a really important commitment to the environment.

We’ve been able to calculate these totals thanks to the Tree Wardens who have taken part in surveys of their activities over the years. Many thanks to all who completed the latest questionnaire, flagged up in the last two issues of Tree Warden Update. It has given us a really good snapshot of what’s happening across the country. Read more
Tree Wardens help minister mark National Tree Week
Perth & Kinross Tree Wardens helped mark National Tree Week in Scotland when they joined their country’s Minister for the Environment, Roseanna Cunningham MSP, and Tree Council Chairman Alasdair Douglas for a special tree planting ceremony in Dunkeld. Read more

Hedge Tree Campaign

Stop the cull of hedgerow trees
With mature hedge trees continuing to be lost from along our country roads, often because of unfounded health and safety fears, there’s a real role for Tree Wardens. Read more

Environment Secretary joins Tree Wardens for master class 
Test Valley Tree Wardens were joined in February by Environment Secretary Hilary Benn for a hedge-laying master class as part of his visit to the South East.
Representatives from the Basingstoke & Deane Network then joined him for a“stakeholder dialogue” lunch and discussion. Read more

Tree Wardens help fund meet its targets
Tree Wardens have played a large part in helping The Tree Council, working with the National Hedgelaying Society and Stella Artois, to meet its Hedge Fund targets. The aim was to plant 73km of new hedges and more than 8,500 new hedge trees in communities across the UK. Read more

Welcoming new networks
We’re very pleased to welcome two new urban Tree Warden networks to the national scheme – Barking and Dagenham, where development is one of the biggest threats to trees, and Portsmouth & Southsea, where Tree Wardens want to protect their street trees and plant more. Read more

Mass tree planting starts the day for North-west forum
When North-west Tree Wardens gathered in Manchester for their regional forum in December they started the day with a mass tree planting. Read more

Hunt is on for Recorders of the Year
Tree Wardens have been playing a major part in the Ancient Tree Hunt, with Nidderdale Network a particularly shining example of how to collect and present data. Now there’s a chance for both an individual Tree Warden and a local network to win prizes for their efforts. Read more
Championing local trees

Buckinghamshire Tree Warden David Rankin has established a tree nursery so that every child can plant a tree in the village and be able to watch it grow – as they themselves grow. Read more

Kent Tree Warden Patrick Coates has helped to create a tree hunt to encourage children to explore Fant Wildlife Area in Maidstone. Read more

Manchester Tree Wardens got a pat on the back and a cheque for £300 in the Manchester Be Proud Awards. Their success was in the Group Contribution to the Environment category. Read more

Oadby and Wigston Tree Wardens have a steady supply of local provenance trees, thanks to a scheme that began 18 years ago as a team-building exercise for the council’s office staff. Read more

Tendring Tree Warden Ian Rose has sounded the alert about threats to Old Knobbley, one of the Essex district’s oldest trees. Read more

Wiltshire Tree Warden Irene Johnson has enlisted the support of offenders from the community payback scheme to help local volunteers restore an overgrown wood. Read more

York Tree Wardens engaged in some 'fruitful' work when they took part in a training day for volunteers at a local community orchard. Read more
Technical update

TLC for hedges
If you’ve recently planted a hedge in your community – perhaps with a grant from the Hedge Fund – the important thing is to get the new plants established. Read more

For longer-term management it’s important to have clear objectives before carrying out any work. For example, a wildlife hedge requires different management techniques from a stock-proof hedge. This will be covered in the next newsletter.

Trees and salt
We’ve just got through a second harsh winter, the coldest for 31 years, and are again faced with salt damage to roadside trees because of all the gritting that went on. Read more

Tell us your news
We are planning to send the next issue of Tree Warden Update to you in July. If you have news to report, dates to flag up or ideas and information to share with fellow Tree Wardens, please email the details to TreeWardenUpdate@treecouncil.org.uk

Or write to Tree Warden Update, The Tree Council, 71 Newcomen Street, London SE1 1YT
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