The Tree Council’s Tree Futures offers help for tree planting through two grants programmes, the ‘Trees for Schools‘ and ‘Community Trees‘ funds. Any school or community group within the UK that is planning a project that actively involves children under 16 is encouraged to draw on the fund to plant trees and make a greener future.
The Tree Council’s National Tree Week (from 29 November to 7 December in 2014) is the focus for these projects and successful applicants organise their planting events in conjunction with our annual celebration of the new tree planting season.
In addition, we are offering funds for fruit tree planting by schools and community groups through our Orchard Windfalls fund, first launched for the 2013 planting season. We are able to fund projects between £100 and £700 and successful applicants will receive up to 75% towards their planting costs. For example, if your project totals £700, The Tree Council would offer up to £525. The remaining 25% will need to be secured by your school or organisation.
With the generous support of an anonymous donor we have been able to produce a Key Stage 1 & 2 teaching and learning resource which will be sent out free of charge to all successful grant applicants. To see taster pages and information about how to purchase the CD ROM please click on this Tree Ties link.’
Category: School and childrens’ Gardening
Cuba and Cake in Norfolk
Norfolk Master Gardeners heard about Permaculture in Cuba, celebrated achievements in helping communities, schools and families in growing their own food and planned for the future at a recent event in Norwich. If you’re growing your own food and live in the Breckland area of Norfolk, you could join the team!
Find out more by clicking the title link.
Old School Gardener
Tree Grants for Schools and Community Groups
‘Grant applications for the 2014 planting season are now open.
This weekend it is the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch (25-26 January), so why not take part in the world’s largest wildlife survey, it will only take up an hour of your time, all you need to do during the hour is to record the different species of birds that you see and the highest number of each species that you see at any one time. Schools and Youth Groups such as Brownies and Cubs can get involved too by taking part in the Big Schools’ Birdwatch again by watching and recording birds for an hour but this can take place 20 January – 14 February. Send in or register your results online, these results are invaluable and will be used to monitor our bird populations and help with their conservation.
If you are going to take part it is a good idea to put out plenty of bird food and
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Each year we always need to earn a bit of seed money for the school garden. Why not plant a gift for Mother’s Day and have a mini plant sale the week before the special day?
Start by planning ahead. Check out local thrift shops for bone china tea cups without the saucers. What I have found is many thrift shops throw teacups that are missing their saucers into the trash. If you ask, they may even wish to donate the tea cups to your school garden. What a great way to recycle something that would have been otherwise thrown out.
You could also collect old tea pots. These are all very beautiful planted up with flowers. The trick to planting tea cups is using the right plants. I like to plant Violas for this project. They are small flowers with a small root system and fit perfectly into most…
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School Gardening Training Courses
This is a link to the RHS programme of courses.
Old School Gardener
Old School Garden raised some funding to help support Norfolk local food growing projects under the ‘Master Gardener’ programme. Here’s a story about how some of the money, raised from a garden open day, has been used.
Based at Great Hockham Primary School, Norfolk, Hockham Herbs is a young gardening group established by Master Gardener, Bev Page back in 2011. When Bev stepped back from leading this group, one of the children’s Dads, Rob Muggridge, took over. In July 2013, Mr Muggridge was tragically killed in a road traffic accident.
Bev applied for funds to purchase a tree that the Herbs group could plant in memory of Mr Muggridge. The children adored their growing mentor and coming back this autumn was difficult for them.
To have the opportunity to plant “Rob’s tree”, care for it and watch it flourish will help them come to terms with their grief and loss.
Bev was awarded funds and she purchased a Morello Cherry Tree from Thetford Garden centre and she had enough money left over to add a bird box. The tree was planted on Wednesday, 13 November in the school orchard, with the help of the Hockham Herbs and Mrs Muggridge. The bird box is destined for a mature tree trunk in the school woodland.
Old School Gardener with thanks to Bev Page and Gabbie Joyce
This year has been a good year for conkers, as well as most other fruits and nuts, when we visited our local Horse Chestnut trees in October there was an abundance of spikey green shells hanging on tightly in the chilly north easterly wind, we collected about thirty beautiful, shiny brown nuggets that had fallen on the ground, enough for Thomas to play conkers with and some to plant as well.
The first record of the game of conkers is from the Isle of Wight in 1848, they originally played with snail shells! Click here to learn how to play the game of conkers.
Horse Chestnut trees were introduced from the Balkans in the late 16th Century, in the UK we have over two million trees, even though this year has been a good year for conkers the Horse Chestnut tree is under threat.
Nearly a million of our trees are infected…
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Yesterday was my last fall class with the grade three students. Since the community garden is basically one big puddle, we decided to do a garden class at the school . A couple of years ago we made nut free bird seed cookies and the kids had lots of fun making them. So why nut free? The school is a nut free zone as so many children have nut allergies. I couldn’t take anything that contained nuts into the school. As I looked for birdseed this year, my favourite brand without nuts was nowhere to be found. The other brands had allergy alerts on the bags. So what could I do? It was time to think about other possibilities. I had read online about using Cheerios and dried bagels as the filler. Feeding birds cereal didn’t appeal to me and I am not sure how much the birds would like…
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Old School Garden 