Some churches might feel limited in the number of trees they can plant by the small amount of land they own, but Revd Mike Saunders talked to our Bright Now Campaign Manager Sharon Hall, explaining how a team from St Lawrence’s Church in Hungerford have planted nearly 7,000 trees on land owned by local farmers, charities and a school. Growing trees is one of the most positive things we can do for the climate – trees act as a carbon sink and provide shade, cooling and habitats for wildlife.
Sharon Hall: Can you tell me about what you’ve done, and why you think it was important?
Revd Mike Saunders: We approach landowners, like farmers, like estate managers, and say ‘we’d like to offer you a deal. We’d like to supply trees of the species you choose, we’d like to plant them for you, and you will own them. The only downside is that the people who’ve done the planting need to have access – to be able to check up that it’s all going alright.’
Using that method we’ve planted some with farmers, we’ve planted some with a big charity in Hungerford called Town and Manor, we’ve planted them everywhere basically. We’ve planted them in the school, and Woodland Trust have been brilliant. Woodland Trust say that we can have 420 trees in November, and another 420 trees in March, and using that method, and partnering with as many people as we can, we’ve planted 6,800 and something trees – so it’s a lot of trees!
Sharon Hall: That’s fantastic. How many did you say you managed to plant in a morning with your team?
Revd Mike Saunders: When we were planting with the Kirby Estate, I think it was twelve of us managed to plant 840 trees in a morning. We started at 9 in the morning, we finished at 12 and we had bacon butties at 10:30. What we’ve found, most blokes will do almost anything for a bacon butty.
Sharon Hall: Great. Why do you think it is important to be planting trees?
Revd Mike Saunders: One of the members of our church is a guy called Mike Morecroft and he works for Natural England, he’s the principal scientist in charge of climate change mitigation and adaption. He did a talk in church on a Wednesday evening and 80 people showed up to listen to his talk about climate change. At the end over questions it became clear that the crowd wanted to know what they could do that would help mitigate climate change. And that’s really why we’re planting trees. What we’re hoping to do is to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere into trees, and thereby do our bit to try and save the planet, and admittedly we probably need to plant some more trees but we’re doing our best.
Sharon Hall: That’s great.
Revd Mike Saunders: Because we’re a church group, we count as a community group for the Woodland Trust. The truth is every single church in the UK could plant as many trees as us if they want to, so really between us, the sky is the limit! We really could plant millions of trees, so why don’t we?