Haringey Council was one of eight local authorities to join the Trees for Streets’ pilot year in 2021. They’ve now been joined by a further 19 local authorities. Over 800 trees have now been funded within the first three seasons – exceeding all expectations.
In this case study, we’ll look at how the scheme has worked for Haringey Council and what they’ve gained from being involved.
Trees for Streets
Although Haringey already had their own in-house street tree sponsorship scheme, they were keen to take it to the next level and benefit from being involved in a well-resourced national scheme.
The Trees for Streets scheme offers:
- A user-friendly fundraising and engagement platform
- A local engagement team to support community-led fundraising
- Highly effective marketing and communications in each locality
- Being part of a network of pioneering local authorities
- The backing of a national urban tree charity – Trees for Cities – which include access to additional funding and engagement opportunities
THE RESULTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES
Over the past 3 seasons, over 800 trees have been funded. This has been from a mixture of individual sponsorships, groups (usually streets groups) and local companies.
We’ve seen a sharp rise in the number of neighbour groups coming together to collectively fund multiple trees to transform entire streets.
Many of our sponsors also take on the job of watering – which lifts the burden off the council still further, whilst driving a heightened sense of ownership. This also represents a significant cost saving.
Last year the Mayor of London invested in the scheme, which saw Haringey benefit from an additional 110 standard trees in priority locations.
Empowering residents
The act of sponsoring a tree is a powerful one. People sponsor trees for all sorts of reasons, and feel empowered knowing that they can make a difference to where they live.
Sponsoring a tree helps dissolve barriers with the council.
We were pleased to see that tree sponsorship requests came from all across Haringey – from Muswell Hill to South Tottenham – a even spread of participation across the community.
We’ve so many great stories – here are just two:
TOTTENHAM: CROWDFUNDING TWO TREE-LESS STREETS
When a community pulls together it’s amazing what can be achieved. We were very impressed with the community behind Healthy Streets North Tottenham who managed to crowdfund 18 trees for 2 tree-less streets.
PLANTING A TREE FOR THE COMMUNITY
Haringey resident and local charity worker, Mash Alam, has sponsored a tree for his community. He had specifically wanted to give something back, and planting a tree to help green up the local area seemed the right thing to do.
Working with Haringey
Working with Haringey Council has been an excellent experience for Trees for Streets. They are committed to increasing tree cover across the borough and the Trees for Streets scheme is just one element of a wider tree strategy. The council directly funds planting in priority locations, whilst also raising money through grant applications.
Haringey Council were excited to work with Trees for Streets, seeing it as an opportunity to both increase the level of funding available to them, whilst getting residents directly involved in greening their own streets, increasing their sense of ownership and civic pride.
Haringey’s Trees for Streets has been a massive success.
The project has proven very popular with the community, and we’ve received many more requests than we ever anticipated, demonstrating that this approach to funding additional tree planting has really caught the imagination of the public.
It’s enabled the council to work directly with local residents and give them ownership over improving their neighbourhoods.
Alex Fraser, Tree & Nature Conservation Manager, Haringey Council
Grass roots engagement
Trees for Streets Engagement Manager, Lizzie, has been leading community engagement with local residents, ‘We’ve seen streets coming together to raise money collectively for trees. We’ve seen residents in more affluent areas sponsoring trees in other parts of the borough where tree cover is lacking. And we’ve seen the very positive impact on all those involved’.
The scheme has definitely caught the attention and imagination of the public who want to make their streets greener and generally nicer places to be.
Managing the process
Trees for Streets makes it as easy as possible for Haringey to benefit from tree sponsorship.
When we receive a sponsorship request from a resident, the information is sent to Alex, the Tree Officer at Haringey. Alex’s team inspects the proposed location and will either confirm that the tree can be planted or suggests an alternative location. We then communicate this to the resident.
Haringey plant the sponsored trees at the same time as their other tree planting, , using their inhouse team. Alex works closely with the highways team when there is the need to create new tree pit locations.
Promoting the scheme
The Trees for Streets Marketing and Communications team, promotes Haringey’s scheme using mixture of digital and traditional channels, including organic social media, PR, leaflets, and advertising. We also work closely with Haringey’s inhouse communications team.
The council has also been very active in promoting the scheme through their own email newsletter and social channels, whilst neighbours have been spreading the word at street level, through a combination of social media, WhatsApp, and good old-fashioned face-to-face conversations.
Find out more
Take a look at Haringey Council’s scheme on the Trees for Streets platform:
https://sponsor.treesforstreets.org/provider/haringey-council
If you’d like to find out how your council can get involved, drop us a line at team@treesforstreets.org
