A little while ago Coney Hall saw some new trees planted on our streets. Some of these will help to replace older trees when the time comes – but urban trees aren’t just about making things look nice. They have lots of other benefits too, for us, our children and our wildlife.
Street trees have been shown to:
- clean our air and help to remove harmful pollutants
- shade our pavements (and for those who drive, our cars)
- reduce the impact of heavy rainfall
- provide a habitat for wildlife
There are lots of resources with information about the benefits of street trees, so if you’d like to know more Trees for Cities and The Woodland Trust are good places to start. You might notice that a range of different trees have been planted. Visit the Bromley Council website to see a full list and help to identify the ones near you.
Help to keep our trees healthy
Of course trees are living things, and like many of us they need a little help from time to time. Sarah Chant from EACH got in touch with some information about watering the trees to keep them happy and healthy and help make sure we’re all able to feel the benefits. Over to Sarah:
Consider the street tree outside of your house, in the words of the Woodland Trust:
“Tall, strong and incredibly handsome. Hard-working, worth a fortune, kind to animals, great with children. Trees give our neighbourhood life, colour and beauty…”
Our Coney Hall ‘tree friends’, Mr and Mrs Rickard have been watering trees in Coney Hall for years. However, now that we are lucky enough to have more new trees, it is becoming too difficult for them to do this vital job on their own.
If you have any new trees outside your house, please could you help by watering them during the hot weather? The council will come round from time to time but as I am sure you can imagine, they have a lot of trees to water! The young ones are thirsty and will die if we don’t help them. If you are happy to ‘adopt’ your tree (you may choose to share the responsibility with your neighbour), would you be kind enough to let me know and I will tell Mr and Mrs Rickard.”
Adopting a tree sounds like a great idea – a simple way to help to make Coney Hall a healthier place for ourselves, our children and each other. If you’d like to do it too, you can contact Sarah by email to let her know: sarahlouisechant@icloud.com
Coney Hall Village Residents' Association (CHVRA) 