Trees can provide a whole range of benefits to the school environment, providing shade in summer, different scenery throughout the year with their changing leaves and of course not least, their environmental benefits, helping to offset the harmful carbon dioxide emissions which contribute to global warming.

The Woodland Trust works on a whole range of campaigns and issues surrounding trees, educating the public. They currently have a campaign to encourage us all to plant more trees. As part of this campaign they are offering FREE trees and hedges to schools. Schools can register for their free pack and schools have a choice of a tree pack consisting of 30 trees, including 10 each of birch, rowan and cherry, or a hedge pack consisting of 30 mixed shrubs, including; hawthorn, hazel, holly, dogwood and dog rose. There is also a free seed pack which can be ordered, containing silver birch seeds with trays, root trainers and compost.

The children could  plant the trees and hedges themselves and link the project to their classroom curriculum. The Woodland Trust has a range of materials, including free worksheets to download, covering parts of the KS2 Science curriculum, and topic work on leaves and Autumn for KS1 and the Foundation stage.

There is also a very good, colourful  interactive resource on climate change with supporting data handling activities.

These are all excellent resources and the planting of these extra hedges and trees in school grounds up and down the country will provide lasting benefits for generations of children to come.  So do you have somewhere in your school grounds suitable for planting some new trees?

Or, if you know of anyone who has land where they would like to plant woodland, the Trust also has a scheme open to the general public where they offer to plant free trees to create new woodland, if you have a minimum of 2.5 acres available.

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