Making Bath and north east Somerset an even greener place to live, work and visit.
More Trees BANES is a not-for-profit community based organisation that works hard to grow, plant and care for trees in our local area. Set up in 2008, we’ve planted approximately 11,000 trees so far.
Since 2020, we’ve been focussing on growing our own trees with local provenance. It’s an exciting time for us as we set up a network of community tree nurseries across Bath and North East Somerset.
Everything we’ve achieved, has been through people rolling up their sleeves and helping out in their spare time. We have so much fun, getting our hands dirty, meeting new people whilst spending time in the great outdoors.
Community Tree Nurseries
We have a growing network of tree nurseries in and around Bath and now in Keynsham, where we grow our trees on before they are planted out into their final destinations. We plan to extend our network across BANES in 2023. Each nursery has an enthusiastic and friendly group of volunteers who are always looking for extra help. No experience required!
Tree Planting
During the winter, we’ll be planting trees. This may be with BANES Council, Curo Housing, or other local and community organisations. Planting new trees is a satisfying job, where your handiwork can be revisited and enjoyed for many years to come.
Tree Aftercare
It’s really important that new trees are given TLC, particularly for the first two-three years – it makes a huge difference to survival rates. This work tends to be done during warmer months of the year, so bring a picnic!
Seed Collecting and Processing
Our volunteers help to collect, process and sow our tree seeds. Seed collecting and processing starts in earnest in September and continues through to December. The processing of seeds and growing on the germinated seedlings takes place in the “Hub”, based in Royal Victoria Park until May/June when the seedlings are then distributed across the nursery network. We will be training volunteers this year in how to identify around twenty native tree species and collect the seed for us from local woodland in in the Autumn.
Other Volunteering Opportunities
If you have other skills that we could put to good use, we need volunteers to help us behind the scenes e.g. representing us at events, fundraising, communications, producing content, social media etc.
If you would like to find out more about our volunteering opportunities, please get in touch via the form below, or contact us on volunteers@moretrees.earth.
Here in the UK we import millions of trees every year, and most of our hard wood. This can and needs to change, and we want to be part of the solution. We want to be part of the move towards more sustainable tree growing and planting in the UK by producing high quality trees, with local provenance, to be planted out locally. By doing this we can:
We want people to get involved in this great venture! This is why we have decided to set up a network of community-based nurseries so that people all over BANES can help us to grow thousands of good quality local trees each year.
So far, we’ve set up four Community Tree Nurseries with more in the pipeline for this year and 2023:
People usually get together once a week at the community nurseries to help the baby trees thrive. The range of jobs include light weeding, watering, planting and lifting trees, as well as some larger tasks such as constructing compost areas and installing rainwater harvesting systems – something for everyone.
The nurseries offer a great chance to meet new people, get some fresh air and exercise whilst also making a real contribution towards helping our natural environment.
We are also delighted that we now have five schools with mini-tree nurseries and looking to set up more of these for 2023. The school nurseries typically involve one or two raised beds. We hope to develop our programme with schools to include seed collecting and to maximise the learning, fun and educational benefits from growing trees in their school grounds.
All of our trees grown in the community will be planted out locally, within ten miles of where the seed was first collected
Space.
We need space to grow saplings. Our ideal community nursery locations will be with established community groups or organisations. We provide the seedlings and these are transferred to the community nursery in the Spring. All you need is space for one or two raised beds, permission from the landowner/owners and enough volunteers to help look after the trees through the year. Training and support is given in the art of tree growing (although we are still learning ourselves!). We also help set up larger nurseries where there is particularly strong community support/enthusiasm and for example, we are currently working with a Parish Council in Chew Valley to set up a new nursery at the centre of the village.
If you:
Please get in touch! We would love to hear from you.
Funding.
As we start this journey, we are reliant on donations and grants. We plan to generate revenue e.g. through tree sales, and in the meantime would love to get your financial support. We are blessed to have received funding from a wide range of organisations and individuals, and to achieve our aims, we are looking for more support in 2022/23.
We will be employing a part-time co-ordinator, and would like to be able to employ more people. We need a vehicle, and ideally would have our own HQ with space for a small office, storage and nursery beds.
You can support us in so many ways. Please get in touch.
LET’S GROW!