For councils
A new approach to street tree funding
We think streets trees are amazing, and we’d like to help you create a step-change in the level of tree planting your council or city does.
Trees for Streets provides councils with a great way to engage residents and local businesses to make a donation to cover some, or all, of the costs of a new street tree(s), and in some cases even water them…
Trees for Streets manages an online sponsorship platform. You can use it to host your own street tree sponsorship programme.
Local initiatives always work best when supported by local engagement, which is why we develop and help deliver a success plan to support each council’s sponsorship programme.
Once a resident’s sponsorship has been approved (maybe outside their house or in their street), the planting is simply managed through the council’s usual street tree planting arrangements.
Each council determines the details of their own scheme, including how much contribution they want from their residents to sponsor each tree.
In Lewisham we’ve seen residents successfully sponsoring AND doing the watering of their new trees, the latter increases the savings and creates a real sense of ownership
If your council spends, say £500, planting and watering a new street tree, then if you ask your residents to donate, say, £150 per new tree AND take on the watering, you can reduce the expenditure per tree down to £150-200. That means you can plant more than twice as many trees for the same budget. This is a model that has been working well in both Lewisham and Bristol.
Trees for Streets, is a new charitable enterprise, set up by the charity, Trees for Cities, in partnership, with the civic innovator, Start with Local, supported by the Mayor of London, and funded by the City Bridge Trust. Do drop us a line if you'd like to find out more hello@treesforstreets.org
