Earth Restoration Service

In the beginning of 2023, we donated trees to a number of schools to create their own School Tree Nursery. Brookfield Infant & Junior School in Kent was one of them.

The planting was led by Forest School leader, Tania, who got no less than 100 students involved. They were from across several years, aged 5-13, and very excited to get planting.

Tania told us how the day went and how the trees already have been a great source of learning for the students.

“As a Forest School Leader, I supported the children to plant trees throughout the sessions that the infant and junior school children attended. All children that came to Forest school that week planted a tree.

Many children have named them or wanted to plant more. I used ID sheets that I had been given from another tree planting organisation, and all the children were involved in looking and trying to ID the trees from buds.

This was a brilliant learning resource and a fantastic way to get the children more encompassed in the activity. I have laminated the bud ID sheets so they are reusable.

As a Forest School Leader across both schools I have been a little involved with the eco councils of both schools. Therefore, we organised from both schools the eco camp’s school council one afternoon to come and plant some trees at the front of the school.

We did this where there is a large expanse of grass the community, parents and children are able to walk past and see this space.

The children were so excited to plant and in one afternoon they planted 14 trees between them. So proud of them. The eco-warriors within our school were praised and celebrated for doing such a great job.

I can not thank the Earth restoration service enough. This is our second time receiving trees and again such a positive experience.

Thank you so much for providing decent sized saplings, a variation of native species and for giving us this opportunity. As a school we feel very lucky to have been given this opportunity.”

Such a great story that shows how tree planting itself is a great learning experience for children. These trees will continue to be part of their learning, as they are looked after and grow in their nursery. They will eventually be planted within their own community.

We donated 100 native wildflower plugs to Brough Community Primary School in Cumbria just before Easter, to help create a lovely new wildflower meadow in the school grounds as part of our Flutter Flowers Programme. Five children aged 8-11 helped on the day, who according to their teacher, were very excited about the planting event!

The teacher explained that  "this is the first year that we have attempted to enhance this particular area, as part of a new management plan for a wildlife area. We will be encouraging children in to use and appreciate the meadow from the beginning of the summer term, 2021."

We are certainly looking forward to seeing the flowers bloom and meadow thriving in the years to come! Thank you so much to Nick Powell, who's personal donation helped fund the wildflowers for the school. They are all native to the UK and selected to particularly attract and provide food for butterflies.

While 2020 proved to become a very different year than anyone could have expected, we still managed to deliver 50 tree saplings to Bledlow Ridge School in High Wycombe in March for pupils to establish a tree nursery on their grounds.

Teacher, Marion Lyon, made this opportunity a focus for an after-school STEM club and kindly provided this feedback on their experience.

“When we heard that we had been successful and would be receiving saplings, I chose to use it as a focus for an after-school STEM club. We thought about the best location, measured up, drew plans learnt how to use tools safely and built raised beds in the weeks before. As the date of arrival was delayed, we were able to launch the tree nursery during British Science Week and got a grant for some measuring equipment that we can use to monitor the trees and weather over the years to come and use in other school science. We were also able to invite a couple of children, who struggle in school with academic work to help with the planting, which ties them into the success of the project. And with different groups of children in school since Easter, it has been easy to take small groups out to measure the saplings, record changes etc. Thank you for setting up this initiative”.

A great example of how our School Tree Nursery programme can be used for extra-curricular learning with children on different science topics, including ecology, climate change and the environment.