The residents of Harrow clearly want to do their bit to green up their streets, this is borne out by the support Harrow’s Trees for Streets scheme has had over its first year.
Harrow has a heritage of well treed streets and green well kept parks. Trees for Streets is working with the residents, local business and the council to help raise additional funding through sponsorship to help re-green some of the streets that have lost their trees over the years or perhaps never had them.
There is wide recognition of the many benefits of street trees. They do so much for us:
- Keep streets and buildings cool
- Absorb pollution
- Provide shade on sunny days
- Create habitats for wildlife
- Reduce littering and fly-tipping
- Encourage calm and careful driving
…and generally make our neighbourhoods better places to live.
Working in Harrow
Harrow has been a great council to work with. They had already been running street tree sponsorship and memorial tree schemes, but were keen to tap into our new online application process, and the support we provide with our marketing, engagement and fundraising.
They even halved the amount of money needed to sponsor a tree to make it more accessible for local residents. Harrow also make life easy for sponsoring street trees by being able to plant in both pre-existing empty tree pits and creating new tree pits if a viable location is requested. This is great because it makes it possible to green the greyest streets across the borough.
Following the planting of the first years’ trees, we paid a visit to Harrow to see how our sponsors have got on and to meet their tree team.
Greening South Harrow
Trees for Streets raised funding to plant 40 street trees in higher priority parts of the borough, where there are far fewer trees. A varied selection of Maple, Magnolia, Hawthorn, Dogwood, Oak, Hornbeam, Linden and all sorts of fruit trees have been planted in streets across South Harrow, where they’ll absorb pollution, provide shade and attract wildlife as they grow.
Keeping Harrow’s parks green
Harrow has some stunning parks, and we’re only too pleased to be able to offer residents a really accessible way to sponsor new tree planting in them.
As well as street trees, we also host Harrow’s memorial tree scheme, which we’ve rebadged as Celebration Trees. These are sponsored trees that can be planted in parks and other nominated green spaces. Calling the scheme Celebration Trees uses positive language and widens the appeal of sponsoring a tree in a park. We’d had people sponsor Celebration Trees for all sorts of reasons, from dedications to lost loved ones to businesses wanting to celebrate an anniversary, to simply gifting trees.
green your Street
If you’d like to fill your street with trees, then please use our online sponsorship request app, which lets you pick a location on our interactive map.
