Thame Green Living is working with #ThameTrees of 21st Century Thame, Thame Town Council, SODC, Carmichael UK and John Morris (local tree expert) to plant trees and hedges on two areas of public land.
For the past few years #ThameTrees has successfully planted over 3500 trees as hedges and as standalone trees. But these have been on private land where the landowner has taken responsibility for looking after them. Recent visits to some of these planting areas have confirmed that the landowners / residents have taken great care of them.
During this time Thame Green Living has been working closely with Thame Town Council to identify areas of land in Thame that could have more hedging and trees.
Rycote Meadow was a success last year – where 700 hedge plants were planted – on public land. Prior to planting this area it was agreed that Cuttlebrook Conservation Volunteers who look after Cuttlebrook Nature Reserve would become the custodians of this new planting to ensure that the plants are looked after until they are established and will then maintain the new plants as necessary into the future.
We now have 2 new areas that Thame Green Living and Thame Town Council have agreed can be planted up.
Thame Green Living have secured the funding for the expert advice, plants, stakes, guards and much.
We are so close to being able to arrange the planting of these areas but we have to have a maintenance arrangement in place before we do.
We need a small team of people who go out walking or running regularly to check on the plants for the next 2 years.
This task will simply be to identify whether any of the plants are wilting or diseased – basically are not looking healthy – and let someone know !
We then need that someone. A person who will be the central point for reporting any plant issues to.
Lastly we need a team of people who would be willing to be called upon – on an irregular basis – to act on any issues that have been identified.
The issues and their resolutions might be :
- Too dry – organise to get water to the plants – this will be the most common task
- Overgrown – remove competing weeds around each plant – second most common task
- Diseased – after the central person has established what the solution is – to apply that solution
- Damaged – rectify the damage and add protection if necessary
Establishing the trees should only be for a couple of years and with a large team of volunteers we could share the maintenance throughout the year.
Contact [email protected] if you think you’d like to get involved.
