Celebrate National Tree Week with The Parks Trust

In November each year we celebrate National Tree Week, running from 28 November to 6 December, recognising trees and their importance plus this week marks the start of the winter tree planting season, which typically runs from November to March.

The Parks Trust are guardians of over 6,000 acres of greenspace, that makes up 25% of the city. This year on top of our normal planting, which can exceed 30,000 plants and 40,000 bulbs, The Parks Trust will also be planting an additional 1,250 native trees such as Oak, Cherry, Small Leaved Lime Oak, Hornbeam and evergreen Yew, in various places across the city, partly to replace Ash trees, that have unfortunately been infected with Ash Dieback.

If you would like to get involved in celebrating National Tree week, we’ve created a series of activities that will encourage you to learn more about the trees within our parkland and the vital role they play. If you visit our social media channels throughout this week, you’ll be able to see our spotlight tree series where you’ll be able to learn about a new species of tree each day. We also be sharing a whole host of downloadable activities on our website that get you out and about exploring the parks.

If you’re looking for family activities, you could download our Tree Identification sheet and teach your children about nature, you can do this activity whilst out for a walk but it’s also possible to do this from the comfort of home by getting in to your garden or looking through a window. For younger children we’ve also developed a learning activity that encourages them to find different leaf types to create a leaf kebab, this is a great activity to do from your local park. Our Autumn leaf challenge is also a fun activity to get involved with as you hunt for beautiful leaves across our parkland.

For those looking for a slightly different activity and a way to unwind, why not try our Mindfulness Walk at The Tree Cathedral or our Forest Bathing activity, both of which help you relax, switch off and connect to the beauty of nature. All of these and many more activities will be shared on our social media channels or on our website, www.theparkstrust.com/treeweek

In addition to the above, this year we also launched our Acorn Collection programme, where we encouraged members of the public and schools to help collect Acorns from our ancient woodlands. Over the next two years these acorns will be grown and nurtured by the individuals, until they are ready to be returned to The Parks Trust and planted back in our woodlands.

Rob Riekie Landscape and Operations Director says ‘It’s been brilliant to see so many residents and schools across Milton Keynes take part in our Acorn Collection scheme, to date we’re had almost 4,000 acorns collected and planted. After two years, we’ll collect these from their growers and replant them in our woodlands. As part of our strategy to maintain the woodland and its historic character and richness of biodiversity, we need to replace the lost and dying Ash trees with species of trees that are native to the woodland, such as Oak and this collection drive is a fantastic way of getting the community involved’.

For more information and to download our activities please visit: www.theparkstrust.com/treeweek