How it works
Trees for Streets makes sponsoring a street tree as effortless as possible. We’ll capture the details of your request – along with your sponsorship donation – and work with your local council to make it happen.
Councils are responsible for planting trees in our streets, but sadly, council budgets are under-pressure as a result of years of cuts, and now the COVID crisis will make this worse. This severely limits the amount of street tree planting councils can do, just at a time when we are crying out for more trees.
Street tree sponsorship makes more money available to keep planting street trees. Your contribution both financial will allow your council to plant many more trees with the same budget.
Each local council is responsible for its own sponsorship scheme, and as such it will make its own arrangements to plant new street trees. It is highly likely that your council will use their existing tree contractor to plant any new trees sponsored through this website.
If your sponsored tree is vandalised, it is likely that your council will replace it.
The exact terms and conditions of your council’s sponsorship scheme will be linked to from their dedicated page on this website, when the scheme launches at Easter 2021.
Trees for Streets is a charitable enterprise that hosts and promotes local street tree sponsorship schemes on behalf of local councils. Each local council sets the terms and conditions of its own street tree sponsorship scheme.
If your sponsored tree dies, it is likely that your council will replace it.
The exact terms and conditions of your council’s sponsorship scheme will be linked to from their dedicated page on this website, when the scheme launches at Easter 2021.
If you’ve agreed to water the tree, and fail to do so, the council may reserve the right not to replace it in these circumstances.
Trees for Streets is a charitable enterprise that hosts and promotes local street tree sponsorship schemes on behalf of local councils. Each local council sets the terms and conditions of its own street tree sponsorship scheme.
If there is a scheme being run in your borough, it will be run by your local council. From Easter 2021 you’ll be able to use this website to search by council area.
Your council will determine the details of their scheme and set the terms and conditions.
Trees for Streets is a charitable enterprise that hosts and promotes local street tree sponsorship schemes on behalf of local councils.
Of course, a community organisation or a group of neighbours can get together to sponsor one or more trees. The simplest way for a group to pay for a single tree is to nominate one person to fill in the online forms on this website and organise the payment on behalf of their group.
Of course you can sponsor more than one tree. The process involved in doing so may vary from council to council, but we’ll be able to help you with that.
Some locations may simply be unsuitable for planting a tree. This may be as a result of the proximity of underground services (cables and pipes), lamp-posts, telephone poles, telecoms boxes, drop kerbs, pedestrian crossings, or pavements that are simply too narrow to fit a tree.
A tree pit is a space to the edge of the pavement that has been purpose made to accommodate a tree. It is usually situated in the verge area of the pavement, it will contain soil and often has hard edging.
The easiest place to plant a street tree is into an existing empty tree pit or a grass verge. If there is a hard surface where you’d like to have a tree planted, your council MAY be willing to plant here. Some councils will create a new tree pit, but they may ask you for a contribution.
Some locations may be unsuitable for a tree. This may be as a result of the proximity of underground services (cables/pipes), a nearby lamp-post or telephone pole, telecoms boxes, drop kerbs, pedestrian crossings, or pavements that are simply too narrow to fit a tree.
You can use our online forms to request your street tree sponsorship. At the end of the forms you will be asked for payment details. If it is the case that you are sponsoring a tree in a location which has already been verified by the council, we will take your payment immediately. If on the other hand your local council needs to determine whether it is actually possible to plant at your preferred location, we will only take payment when this has been confirmed. Our payment processor will hold your direct debit securely, so that payment can be made at that time.
It is likely that councils will happily listen to any comments/requests you may have, and some may offer a choice of features.
In most circumstances it is unlikely that you will be able to choose the variety of tree, this is because the selection of tree has to be made based on the circumstances of the location it is being planted. Factors include, what type of trees are already in your road, whether you are in a subsidence risk area, the width of the road and proximity of houses, along with consideration of the existing mix of tree species in your borough.
Trees for Streets run street tree sponsorship schemes on behalf of local councils. It is up to your local council to determine the detail of their local scheme, including whether to offer residents the choice of tree.
Most councils will not allow a plaque to be added to a street tree. Councils are very resource poor, and the extra task of adding a plaque to a tree is simply not practical. It would also course all sorts of difficulties if residents were to place their own plaques on trees.
In some cases, if your council runs a dedicated memorial tree planting programme, then they may have a process in place to arrange for a plaque. These memorial programmes tend to be restricted to more high-profile locations, such as parks, and towns squares, and often the locations will have been pre-selected by the council.
We will provide details of any such memorial schemes on page for your local council, (available from Easter 2021.)
It’s your local council that legally owns the tree.
When you sponsor a tree, you are making a wonderful gift to your local community, who will all share in the benefit of this new tree for generations.
Street trees really need watering weekly during the summer months for their first 3 years to get them properly established. The rate of watering needs to increase if it is a particularly dry summer. We recommend at least 20 litres per week. Trees like a really good soaking. It’s very difficult to over water your tree, but it’s very easy to under-water it.
Watering your tree is a great opportunity to bump into your neighbours, and makes a powerful statement that yours is a neighbourhood where people care. You may even wish to recruit some neighbours to help you.
Some councils may also provide their own watering to complement your watering effort.
This scheme promotes the planting of trees in streets, and in amenity locations, like council housing estates.
We expect most councils will let you make the selection of a viable street location for the tree you are sponsoring. This could be outside your house, in your street, or on your kids walk to school route.
Some councils will offer a comprehensive list of pre-vetted locations to choose from. All this information will be provided on this website for each council’s own scheme, (which will be available from Easter 2021).
Life is never as straight forward as you’d like it to be. Some locations are suitable to plant a street tree, some are simply not. What would prevent the council from planting a tree in a location could be:
The easiest place to plant a street tree is into an existing empty tree pit, or a grass verge. Some councils may be happy to create a new tree pit into a hard surface, but may ask for a contribution from you to do so.
Please note, Trees for Streets promotes schemes on behalf of individual councils. Each council will run their scheme slightly differently.
We expect councils to charge between £100-£200 to residents to sponsor a tree, this will depend on the financial circumstances of each council. Some councils may choose to ask for a smaller contribution in less affluent neighbourhoods.
The background to this is that street trees are very expensive and can cost upwards of £500 each when planting and watering costs are included. This can be higher still if a new tree pit needs to be created.
If you are asked to do the watering this will save up to £150-£200 of these costs, which are the normal contractor fees to water each tree over its first 3 years.
