Winter tree planting is well underway -- and volunteers will be busy in the next few weeks on Barnet Hill and at other sites across the Borough of Barnet.

 

Robin Bishop, who leads for the Barnet Society on environmental issues, is arranging for 120 hawthorn saplings to be planted on Barnet Hill.

Six hundred trees are due to be planted in February to form a Tiny Forest on land near Henlys Corner, Finchley.

Volunteers for the Henlys Corner planting are being encouraged to attend a starter session on Sunday 16 January at Highgate Woods which is being organised by the charity GoodGym.

Volunteers are asked to report to the Pavilion Cafe in Muswell Hill Road and join the Highgate Woods Ranger for a tour of the woods and an explanation of the how the woodland can best be managed for public use. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/starter-session-help-the-ranger-at-highgate-woods

GoodGym volunteers will join up with the environmental charity Earthwatch to plant the 600 trees near Henlys Corner on land adjoining Falloden Way.

Tiny Forests are roughly the size of a tennis court and should provide dense, fast- growing, native woodland, that becomes an attractive location for wildlife and benefits the fight against climate change.

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/barnet-environmental-project-micro-forest

https://earthwatch.org.uk/get-involved/tiny-forest

GoodGym organised tree planting volunteer sessions to help create the Memorial Woodland 2022 at Mill Hill Park (Flower Lane extension) in honour of family, friends and members of the community who have lost their lives during the Covid.19 pandemic.

The latest tree planting on Barnet Hill is designed to form a hawthorn hedge along the western boundary, between Milton Avenue and St Catherine’s Primary School, and will help provide a woodland screen alongside the edge of the Vale Drive Clinic.

In 2020, the Jewish Kisharon charity donated 50 hawthorns and the 75 planted this last winter on Tu B’Shvat, a day of hope after Holocaust Day, helped celebrate not only the Jewish New Year of the Tree and the Barnet Society’s 75th anniversary, but also honoured the work of David Lee, who persuaded Barnet Council to plant around 50 Norway maples and London planes along Barnet Hill to commemorate the Millennium.

An inspection of the 120 hawthorn saplings planted so far revealed mixed success. Some of those planted two years ago are thriving well, having doubled in height, and quite of the few of the 2021 planting have also pulled through.

Mr Bishop said it was encouraging to see that many of the saplings had taken and he looked forward the day when the hawthorns started blossoming in May.

The aim is to plant a total of 300 hawthorn saplings to fill the 100-metre gap between Milton Avenue and the existing hawthorn hedge around St Catherine’s Primary.