This is the 9th and final day of National Tree Week!
We hope you have enjoyed the trees we selected to highlight for National Tree Week, and the memories of the tree protection campaign so many of you were involved in. You can see all the selected trees on the new STAG website here.
STAG has now started to be actively involved in street tree planting for the future. STAG’s street tree planting project, led by the new Committee, is building contacts with community groups across the city and already finding suitable locations for the trees for this phase of the project. The current focus is on areas with low ‘tree equity’ – a measure combining things like tree cover, income, health and air pollution – to bring the long-term benefits of trees to areas that may not have many, or any, trees at the moment. It’s great to see the support we’ve had to finally begin to use some of the money STAG has in its bank account, to increase street trees in deserving areas of Sheffield.
The separate Nether Edge & Sharrow Sustainable Transformation (NEST) group has shown what can be done – raising around £240,000 (through grants & donations) and planted nearly 360 trees in their local area over the last few years, so STAG has a lot of catching up, having only just started this year! NEST too has been planting many of its trees in low ‘tree equity’ streets in its area – enhancing the streetscape and bringing the benefits of trees to areas with a low canopy cover. 89% of these new trees have been on roads without any street trees prior to 2021, and have spread the existing street tree canopy cover outside of traditional “leafy Nether Edge”. STAG now hopes to replicate this success for other areas across Sheffield.
Trees recently planted by NEST
You can read more about STAG’s street tree planting project here.
We welcome anyone who wants to help out in this interesting project – come and join in!