Sainsbury's helps Woodland Trust distribute 300,000 edible trees for planting
Howard Lake | 2 November 2010 | News
With help from Sainsbury’s Active Kids, The Woodland Trust will this Autumn enable school children across the UK to plant free packs of edible trees.
The organisations are distributing 10,000 “edible hedge & copse” packs to schools, which will see an estimated 300,000 children plant native trees in their school grounds and community spaces.
The initiative is part of the Woodland Trust’s “More Trees, More Good” campaign, which aims to facilitate the planting of 20 million native trees every year for the next 50 years.
The trees, when mature, will not only provide shelter and habitats, but also edible nuts and fruit. The packs contain dog rose, elder, cherry plum, hazel, crab apple and blackthorn saplings.
Victoria Redfern from Sainsbury’s Active Kids said: “As part of our ‘Sustainabili-tree’ strategy we intend to plant two million trees over the next five years. By funding the Trust’s hedge & copse packs we see it as a valuable contribution to this goal and also providing a valuable resource to the UK’s young school children. It’s a great way for them to experience first hand the unique wonder of planting a tree.”
Christina Joachim, Woodland Trust campaign development officer added: “Yet again we have been oversubscribed with requests for tree packs this autumn, which shows that there is a real appetite in our country’s schools to plant trees. The new edible packs will not only help us towards our 20 million tree-planting target but uniquely provide a host of food sources for native wildlife.”
Schools can still apply for a free pack to be delivered in Spring 2011.
www.MoreTreesMoreGood.org.uk/schools
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.