Pupils park planting is tree-riffic!

Green fingered children in Liverpool marked National Tree Week by launching a massive tree planting programme in the city’s major parks.

Liverpool city council is piloting the project at seven primary schools with the aim of enabling every 10-year-old child in the city to plant a tree within the next three years.

The council has teamed up with The Mersey Forest and The One Tree Per Child scheme for the children to plant 10,000 new trees by 2020.

More than 50 pupils from Lister Drive Junior School teamed up with The Mersey Forest Team to help plant 500 trees in Newsham Park as part of a wider community planting programme for 2,500 new trees.

A further 50 plus pupils from Our Lady and St Swithin’s and Croxteth Community Primary schools helped plant a further 500 new trees at Alt Meadow, supported by staff from Cass Foundation.

One Tree Per Child is the international tree planting initiative that was founded by film-star Olivia Newton-John and environmentalist Jon Dee to connect young people with the natural environment and is funded in The Mersey Forest through the Defra Trees for Learning fund.

To support the pilot, the council has also awarded Tree Champion status to four other primary schools to act as mentors and has identified four city parks for the planting to take place: Newsham, Walton Hall, Otterspool and Alt Meadows.

The scheme is the first key recommendation to be implemented from the city’s Green Spaces Review which called for children to have greater engagement with the city’s parks.

Paul Nolan, Mersey Forest Director said: “The trees being planted at Newsham Park and Alt Meadows are just the start, with over 10,000 trees planned for planting across Liverpool over this winter, helping to create parts of The Mersey Forest in the most urban of areas.”