It’s a cold Saturday morning in November, yet hundreds of people have descended on Beckton District Park in east London for a day of tree planting. Dozens of shovels stuck into the muddy earth are waiting to be grabbed by newcomers, while four cordoned-off areas are already full of volunteers measuring and digging holes, before carefully planting the young seedlings, called whips.
“By the time the day is done, you look around and there are thousands of trees,” says Jazmin Glen, 26, a volunteer supervisor at the event. “It’s amazing to think you might come back in however many years and there’s an actual forest here that you’ve been a part of creating.”
The team hope to plant 9,000 trees by the end of the day, and although right now the spindly plants look half dead, Glen says they are just dormant and will start to bloom in a couple of seasons.
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