Tree Planting in France
Dehaney James, ITF’s newest team member, shares about a recent tree planting trip to Paris at Ferme de Pontaly.
Having joined the International Tree Foundation during the beginning of the busy tree-planting season, I was eager to get stuck in straight away and my first project was to organise the last 2022 tree-planting event for employees of UPS in France!
This opportunity was insightful, exciting, and enjoyable from the get-go. Organising anything overseas without speaking the native language is hard enough but the fact we had the ITF team, the UPS team and the local farmer working like a hive-mind with a sustainable vision, meant the work was rewarding and pleasurable.
The event itself was a significant success with happy volunteers and their families kitted up, coffeed up, and croissanted up, ready for a morning of planting a 350 mixed native tree hedgerow.
Having my wonderful manager Sam, ITFs UK Programmes Manager, to motivate and teach the team all about the benefits of the work they did that day created a united sense of motivation and fulfilment, all whilst keeping the event light-hearted and fun!
Everybody eagerly picked up a trowel, spade, and sapling, and quickly got dug in! It was essential that the trees we were planting were native to France and a mix of species including Field Maple, Hawthorn, Hazel, English Oak, Whitebeam, Spindle, Blackthorn and Beech.
The importance of having a variety of species comes down to the increased biodiversity and tree survival rates through varied genetics. Local wildlife will benefit from this hedgerow through recognising the characteristics of specific tree species and thus aiding them in their survival.
Hedgerows are great to plant on very open landscapes acting as a nature corridor for animals, gives wind resistance to smaller crops growing nearby, enriches the soil with essential nutrients and more obviously sequesters carbon for environmental welfare!
Overall, I’m extremely grateful to have been a part of this experience and am looking even more forward to organising more in the year to come!
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