Solidarity in protecting nature and supporting the Armed Forces

Earlier this year, we officially became a member of Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of charitable organisations “concerned with the conservation and protection of wildlife and the countryside”. This puts Trees for Cities in the relevant conversations around conserving our natural world, and how we can help influence policy, run collective campaigns, and develop cross-sector thinking. Wildlife and Countryside Link are currently supported by eight million people in the UK and directly protect 750,000+ hectares of land.

We also recently formally signed the Armed Forces Covenant to highlight that we are inclusive in supporting the Armed Forces community. We’ve also partnered with the Green Task Force on projects in the North East of England, and continue to explore new ways of collaborating on their work, “using tree planting and nature based therapy to help provide a pathway to employment for veterans and service leavers.”

Celebrating our connections with partners

Trees for Cities partners with many different organisations to develop our projects and embed them within current initiatives. Here we spotlight a few of our regional partners that we’re proud to be collaborating with.

A More Natural Capital Coalition

A coalition of 20 environmental groups and charities convened by CPRE London, this group presents a unified vision for London that places the environment at the heart of policy and decision-making. The coalition set out a manifesto for the London Mayoral elections in 2020, and one for the London local elections in 2022. More recently, the coalition hosted a Mayoral Environmental debate for the upcoming London Mayoral and London Assembly elections and have shared a list of 10 environmental priorities for the capital.

Treeconomics

We have worked closely with urban treescapes services organisation Treeconomics over several years and on a variety of projects. This includes the creation and delivery of a Tree Planting Strategy for Bexhill with Rother District Council and Forest Research, and a collaboration with Dr James Levine (at The University of Birmingham) to explore opportunities for roadside planting in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. This partnership is targeted to achieve the greatest impact in reducing people’s exposure to poor roadside air quality.

London Urban Forest Partnership

Trees for Cities are an active member of the London Urban Forest Partnership, a network of organisations that collaborate to protect, manage and enhance the capital's trees and woodlands. The partnership developed the London Urban Forest Plan (LUFP), published in November 2020 which sets out the goals and priority actions needed to protect, manage and expand the capital’s urban forest.

Since 2022, we have been part of a subset of partners delivering against the actions of the plan with funding from the Trees Call to Action Fund (from Defra, and administered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund). This has supported our youth engagement work across London, as well as enabling collaboration between London Wildlife Trust and The Conservation Volunteers on the creation and use of a Woodland Condition Assessment tool.

The North East Community Forest

One of fifteen such community forests in England, The North East Community Forest (NECF) is a partnership of six local authorities, alongside local delivery partners and national organisations. Trees for Cities is proud to have been supporting the NECF since it launched in 2021. In this time, we have supported over 60,000 new trees and invested over £150,000 in project support, that has seen over 1,300 local residents engage with tree planting in their local communities. A truly collaborative effort, these projects would not have been possible without the support of the local NECF team and other regional partners.

This is just one example of a community forest that Trees for Cities has supported over the last 30 years. There are various others in the UK that we work with to transform urban tree planting across the country, including the Humber Forest, The White Rose Forest, Cumbria Community Forest and others.

Check out more of our work strategically planting urban trees where they're needed most with the invaluable help of regional partners.