The tree survival challenge
Hotter, drier summers are making it harder for newly planted urban trees to survive. In May, Trees for Cities asked the Impact Unlimited community to help it find new ways to mobilise people and technology, to protect and care for trees.
Impact Unlimited connected the charity with food sharing platform Olio and its CEO Tessa Clarke, along with UCL professor Arthur Kay and the university’s citizen science team – adding expertise in technology, community engagement and citizen science to the challenge.
Their combined response to the Trees for Cities challenge shows what can happen when a problem is opened up to people with different experience and perspectives. The challenge is the subject of a new short film (shown above).
On stage at September’s Impact Unlimited Summit, Trees for Cities CEO Kate Sheldon (pictured) looked back at the four-month challenge process. “Given how hot this summer turned out to be, the timing of the challenge and the volunteering pilot we then did with Olio, was great.
“We ran a small hyperlocal pilot on three sites in Tower Hamlets. We got 10 or 11 volunteers out through the Olio app and they watered and looked after 60 trees through those sessions.
“That very small experience was amazing – people understanding the challenges of watering a tree, meeting new people, feeling they put something back in, then expressing interest in doing it again.
“It was a very small pilot, but it was really interesting and insightful. Now we want to make it happen at scale – so I’ve been talking to the Forestry Commission and the National Lottery about scaling it up. We need investment to make it happen, but the pilot shows that something small can sow the seeds for the future.”
You can also watch the Trees for Cities film on YouTube.
Blog: Planting trees is easy. Helping them survive is getting harder.
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