Another fun day out with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust and some hardy volunteers – or rather that was the plan. It was Saturday 27th January 2018. The Trust’s Education Officer Lucy Shepherd had organised a Tree Planting Event in Alexandra Park, Ipswich, Suffolk which Made by the Forge had sponsored. There was an open invitation to families to come along and help plant the trees to improve and enhance the park. There was another park that scuppered my attempts to be there on time to help and take some photos.

Portman Road is the home of Ipswich’s football club and they were playing Wolves there that afternoon. And if any of you know what it’s like travelling through football traffic, you’ll understand that by the time I’d got to my destination, all the planting was complete. My belated apologies to Lucy for not quite making it. And Ipswich lost, 1-0… Lucy and the team of volunteers managed to plant 250 trees in about 3 hours. That’s about one and a half trees a minute!

Lucy said it was “A massive community effort with about 40 people attending to come and help. It was such a lovely day with people popping by who couldn’t plant trees but who just wanted to see what we were doing…. Some wildflower seed was also planted near the trees and this will be such a lovely area for wildlife when it has all been established.”

Lucy was very grateful for our support because it gave the Suffolk Wildlife Trust the opportunity to plant much needed trees in the park. I’m sure the pictures speak for themselves. There’s something enormously refreshing about young people doing things that involve no screens or computer code although I am well aware of the irony saying that in a blog…