OUR 2024 YEAR IN REVIEW

As we start a new year, it is the perfect time to look back at everything we achieved in 2024, and to look ahead to the start of 2025!

The start of 2024 saw us advertise and recruit two new trustees, Amy Upton and Esther Connock bringing fundraising, marketing and communications experience to the team. Tree lifting started across our community tree nurseries and school nurseries with multiple sessions often lifting over 500 trees a time and in some very cold conditions! We returned to Warleigh Weir where we had planted trees over a number of years previously to provide aftercare and remove tree guards and a trip to Primrose Hill Community Woodland saw us start our first venture into hard wood cuttings – the successful dogwood and elder will be planted out this year. Work started at the new nursery in Twerton with the removal of the old fence and a new one installed, both rabbit and deer proof!

February was all about tree planting and aftercare.

We started at Stirtingale Green Space planting a 60m long hedge and a mini forest over 2 days with a great team of volunteers which included volunteers from Bath Building Society, The Emberson group and Curo. During a morning of aftercare in the fields behind Purlewent Drive, Weston, a team comprising of local volunteers, students, BANES Parks Dept and Counsellor Ruth Mallory successfully mulched over 500 trees planted in 2022 ready for the summer. A “Love your Park” event took place at Whiteway Green where we joined forces with Blooming Whiteway, Curo, Bath Urban Treescape, students from the V-Nature team at Bath University, Sarah Moore (Chair of the council and Chief Womble for Twerton & Whiteway) and local residents. We cleared and mulched 4 planting sites, while some of our Duke of Edinburgh volunteers helped Gordon from Curo replace 3 of the recently planted award trees and a v-clean team collected 9 bags full of rubbish!

At the new nursery, in came the digger to level the ground for the volunteer hut and polytunnel.

Meanwhile, seed sowing started in earnest on Thursdays back at the Parks Dept.

In March, over 150 trees were planted into a mini forest at the Oval, with volunteers from Bath Mind and local residents. The project was funded by Mallory Jewellers to celebrate their 125 years. Charlotte Bond joined our Schools Programme to work alongside Jon delivering the sessions. Work continued at Redland Park with the foundations laid for the volunteer hut and a small hedge was planted. With planting season over we had a tree giveaway at Bath Football Club car park with over 1000 trees collected! Seed sowing continued all month and March ended with us attending the fantastic Climate Hub Springtime Assembly at the Assembly Rooms alongside a whole host of amazing organisations.

In April we took a bit of a breather! The polytunnel was delivered. We worked with Roots allotments to set up a tree nursery at their Tuckers Meadow site. Our seed sowing really ramped up at the Parks Dept and some saplings were planted out in the school nurseries.

Kate Shilling joined the team as our Volunteer Tree Nursery Assistant at the start of May and immediately helped with a session working on the new tree nursery collaboration with Avon Needs Trees at Great Avon Wood. We were lucky to visit the impressive Publow Oak (before the sad news that the wind in early October had split it in half).

Richard and Emma attended a Community Development Workshop run by the Twerton & Whiteway Community Network. With us soon to be residents of the area, it was a great opportunity to meet local groups and learn about them and their ambitions. We look forward to being part of this fantastic network moving forwards. We also presented an online seminar for the Fellowship of the Trees Growing Diversity Project on volunteer engagement.

With a slow start to any summer sunshine, our saplings were slightly later heading out to the tree nurseries. It was great to be joined by the Stride Treglown Bath office at Weston Springs Farm to plant the baby trees there.

And there was more progress at the Central nursery – the volunteer hut was constructed, and the new tool store was erected. Exciting times!

In June, Stride Treglown also joined us at Axbridge Road for a tree care session for the trees planted in 2023. Every tree was given a new mulch mat and mulched ready for summer. Great to see them looking so good!

We ran a Tree Identification workshop in Primrose Hill Community Woodland and joined the Combe Down Fest. Over 600 baby trees were planted out at the Roots Tree Nursery with the allotment holders and one of the air pruning beds at Bath Building Society was filled new saplings.

It was a busy time during May and June for our volunteers in our community tree nurseries at Dry Arch, Barrow Mead, Haycombe Vale and Walnut Springs planting out the tree saplings. Whatever the weather, rain or shine, those baby trees we’re going in! Amazing dedication from everyone as always!

July started with a visit from the Bath group of Headway UK, the brain injury association, to join us at the Urban Garden to help us with some final pricking out of the season. We look forward to seeing them at the central nursery when finished. A 2nd successful Tree Identification Workshop was run at Breach Wood.

Then it was all about the polytunnel!

We started by digging the holes for the foundation tubes. To say we met with some resistance from a few rocks is an understatement. Two days and lots of crow bar and jackhammer action later, the 14 tubes were cemented in! Work continued erecting the polytunnel and digging a deep hole for the soakaway for the recently arrived compost loo. Thank you to the crew from the Emberson Group for joining us and getting really stuck in.

During this we squeezed in a visit to Folly Farm to collect cherry and joined Avon Needs Trees to help plant out over 1000 saplings at the new nursery.

We were thrilled to welcome everyone to celebrate the opening of our new central nursery. Joined by our volunteers, supporters, funders and friends from the community we enjoyed a lovely, sunny evening celebrating the new site and the story and successes of More Trees to date. Thank you to Bath Community Kitchen for providing the amazing canapes!

As this month is the end of the school year, it’s the perfect time to give a big shout out to our Schools Programme Team, Jon and Charlotte and volunteers Jeni, and Jo who recently joined the team in May. The feedback from the programme was extremely positive, and we look forward to continuing to develop the programme. The 1000 plus trees grown at all the school nurseries was just a bonus!

Pictures from our Opening!

During August, normally a quieter month for More Trees, we were busy at the Parks Dept cleaning, sorting, itemising and packing to move everything to the new nursery hub. We took another trip to Folly Farm to try and beat the squirrels to the hazel, and had a lovely evening with Avon Needs Trees celebrating the opening of the new tree nursery at Great Avon Wood.

Essentials were put in place at the new site to ensure we were operational for the start of the seed collecting season – sinks, water, electricity!

We ended the month saying goodbye to Sandra! After 3 years transitioning More Trees into growing our own trees and setting up all the tree nurseries, it was time for Sandra to take a well-earned break. More Trees would not be where it is today without all her hard work and achievements.

Throughout the summer our volunteers nurtured the saplings across all our nurseries watering, feeding and protecting them from the heat whenever necessary.

Seed collecting season started in September followed by the wonderful messy seed processing work! Weekly Tuesday morning visits to local woodlands – a stunning way to spend a morning – were followed by processing every Thursday.

Posters were put up at a number of local schools for students to volunteer as part of the Duke of Edinburgh scheme and as a result we have a great crew volunteering at our Dry Arch Nursery wonderfully looked after by Nat. Thank you as always to Nat for managing the programme and making it such a success!

Emma ran a seed collecting and processing workshop with Avon Needs Trees at the new nursery and surrounding Great Avon Wood and we were joined by Bath in Bloom to pot up over 300 of our small trees which were used as gifts to all the delegates at the Britain in Bloom South West finals. A great way to spread our work (and trees!) across the region.

Sonny Walton joined us as our new Communities Tree Nurseries Manager, having been a regular volunteer after joining us at the Oval planting where he is a resident.

On a sunny day in early October, The One Show film crew visited us!

As many of you will know, Bath was once again crowned champions in the 60th anniversary year of The Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) nationwide gardening competition, Britain in Bloom with the news announced on The One Show on BBC One.

As an introduction to the awards, The One Show did a segment on Britain in Bloom and the entrants filming in Bath and a couple of other locations. More Trees were asked to participate in the filming as one of the community groups Bath in Bloom work with. 

You can read more here in another news item and find a link to the video recording.

During October and November seed collecting and processing continued. It impossible to even guess the number of the seeds collected. It will all become clearer soon as they start to germinate!

In November we launched our new Gift Certificate scheme offering gift certificates for donations which will support our work in 2025 and beyond

As seed collecting ended, we reached the last month of the year. We held a Christmas Social at the central nursery for our neighbours running a Wreath making workshop and decoration making for children. It was an unbelievably windy day as Storm Darragh visited us, and we were delighted our Polytunnel provided a wonderful shelter! All that digging paid off!

We were warmed by mulled wine and yummy mince pies provided by the local bakery in Twerton. It was a fantastic day with a wonderful vibe. Thank you to Marie from the Allotments Association and her husband Andrew who did a fantastic job leading the wreath making workshop. Thank you to Charlotte and Jo from our schools team and finally thank you to Kate and Sally from the Twerton and Whiteway Community Network.

As we end the 2024 review, we want to say thank you to all our volunteers. You are More Trees, and all our success is down to you all. We have the most amazing tree community and are so excited about the future and what 2025 has to bring!

WHAT IS COMING UP IN 2025

Tree planting

It’s tree planting season and we are busy lifting trees at all the nurseries in time for this year’s planting projects. The three big planting projects we have coming up are as follows:

  • Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th January at Green Heart Farm in Almondsbury (Bristol). We are planting around 1000 trees replacing some felled ash trees and creating new woodland.
  • Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th February at Holcombe Green, Weston. We are planting 750 trees into woodland and a hedge.
  • Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th March at The Oval. We are planting 700 trees into a Miyawaki style forest (which will also be fenced in).

We are also planting trees at Peasedown St John Primary School and a small number of trees in the RUH Wellbeing Garden.

Update on the Central Nursery

With the main infrastructure in place now we are starting to really make it look feel and function as tree nursery. We are building beds, installing the rainwater harvesting system, and developing the space in the polytunnel with staging etc with the help of a metalworker, one of our neighbours in Redland Park.

We are also looking at rejuvenating the allotments at the site with new compost bins and encouraging local residents to take up a plot or get involved in growing in some way at the site.

Developing the site as a community space where people drop in to support our work in whatever way they can is something we will continue to focus on.

We look forward to another great year in 2025!