Watering Champions
Working with the community to water street trees
Newly planted street trees need a lot of water during summer months to help them survive and thrive. Local councils do their very best to water newly planted trees, but many can’t support the level of watering they really need. This means that new trees run the risk of dying during very dry spells, or simply not developing anywhere near their full potential.
According to both the Arboricultural Association and Defra, newly planted street trees need 50 litres of water every week during the summer for three years. And this may rise during very dry/hot weather or a drought conditions.
During summer 2024, we launched Watering Champions, to support a real partnership with the local community to look after our young trees. Residents play their part in ensuring the healthy development of newly planted street trees by supplementing council watering.
It’s quite normal for local councils to ask residents to help water of their new street trees. We’re going to take it that one step further…
We support councils with our new Watering Champion app.
We provide highly visible labels (containing a QR code) for all their new street trees. These invite residents to register to water each tree. Simply locate your tree on our online map and register to water it.
Some participating councils will be offering free watering cans and/or water butts.
Trees for Streets sends weekly alerts to the Watering Champions during summer (May to September). We also encourage residents to get fellow neighbours involved and to report problems e.g. broken tree supports or ripped irrigation bags.
Trees for Streets runs #WateringWednesdays, our national summer campaign, to help promote the idea of community participation in street tree watering.
We see this simple act of care, as a potential first step in helping residents become more engaged in the local environment and community.
Watering Champions launched in summer 2024. We’re planning to work with about 10 councils in this first year of the scheme (which is a pilot), and then increase the membership the 2025.
We see this as a great way to:
We’ve developed a package of communications will be to be tailored for each council to use to promote the scheme each year.
If your council would like to find out more about the scheme, please drop us a line to team@treesforstreets.org.
