Ludwell School is tackling climate change. Head Teacher Mrs Harriet Collins and her Eco Committee are led a whole school sapling planting day. Local land owners, Mark (Fish) and Annette Fisher, generously permitted the children to plant saplings in one of their fields. They even donated the stakes to hold up the guards.
The whole school walked over to the nearby field to plant their saplings. Each child was given one of oak, beech, sweet chestnut or silver birch, grown from local seed. They planted the sapling in a trench, pre-dug by a Wiltshire tree warden, then back-filled with soil and heeled it in. They finished by popping a plastic tube (donated by the Woodland Trust) over the top and pushing a plant label into the soil. On their label, they had written their names and the names of people they love who they would like to protect from climate change. Each child then received a badge and certificate to commemorate the occasion.
At a school assembly the week before, the children had been given a child-friendly introduction to climate change and were told how, as Sir David Attenborough said, “the best that an individual can do is to plant trees.” Each tree in its lifetime will draw down 1,000kg of carbon dioxide and fix it in the soil.
The beautiful bonus from planting trees to tackle climate change is that it also helps tackle the nature crisis. This area of planting that the school has planted will be a new wildlife corridor. This will be part of the Lower Coombe Loop, which connects areas of existing woodland, effectively making a much larger habitat, enabling increased biodiversity, better access for animals to food, water, shelter and breeding opportunities. Other Lower Coombe residents are also allowing sapling planting on their land.
To help plant saplings to fight climate change, or if you have land on which tree planters can plant, please email Chris at chrisandsue61@hotmail.com
Chris Harwood is a Computer Science & Maths graduate who taught Computing in secondary school for most of his working life. He and his wife retired and moved from London to Shaftesbury. While watching Sir David Attenborough’s witness statement “A Life On Our Planet”, he heard Sir David say that the best an individual can do about climate change is to plant trees.
As part of his planting trees to fight climate change effort, he is working with Ludwell Primary School. Harriet Collins, the Head, agreed to run a whole school sapling planting day on February 26. Every child was given a sapling to plant in our planting site, in a local field, agreed with the land owner, and to add a protective tube.
This will give each child a feeling of being engaged in fighting climate change, and when they tell others about it, it will raise the awareness that we can do things about it. Our development of the Lower Coombe Loop – our sapling planting group’s efforts are creating corridors to make a large contiguous area of habitat. The area in red is the current corridor under construction. This will help fight the nature crisis as well.
