Success Story!

university technical college, plymouth

UTC received 50 tree saplings to help set up their own School Tree Nursery in March 2021. Students from Year 7 and 11 took part alongside their teacher, Andy, who told us about their planting day and future plans.

“The tree planting became part of our wider Eco-school project that we have been working on since the beginning of the school year. Our student-led Eco-committee selected 3 key areas to concentrate on: Marine, Biodiversity and Healthy Living and they identified the planting of additional trees in the school grounds as a key activity for both the Bio-Diversity and Healthy Living strands.”

The tree nursery will be the home of the small native tree saplings, where the students will look after them until they are large enough within the next year or two, to be planted elsewhere at the school or within the community. Andy told us how the students helped plan for the nursery, how the planting day went and the future for the trees:

“During lockdown, our Educare students dug the nursery bed for the saplings alongside our new pond (also part of our Biodiversity strand). We then planned a year 7 lesson around the planting of the trees and the students got to name their trees as they planted them. The few remaining trees were planted by our year 11s. The lesson included discussion about the importance of using native trees and their place in helping reduce climate issues and improve biodiversity in our local environment.

Next year we will be moving the saplings from our nursery bed to their new forever homes. We are about to start a project with a local volunteer group inside our local park, and we are hoping that this might also become a future home for some of our saplings.

The nursery itself has been a great learning experience for our eco-team and KS3 gardeners. They have learnt about mulching to protect the saplings and retain moisture. They also learnt about fungal diseases when a couple of the saplings started to develop mildew, and have made sure that they have been brought back to full health.

Again, thank you so much for the trees. It is great to think that these year 7's will see these trees grow throughout their time at UTC Plymouth”