Microforest

Unlike yesterday's Tiny Forest session in Southall, the Trinity Way Open Space planting event had a high chance of dodging the heavy rain. I took time off again and walked to the easternmost part of the Ealing Borough in lovely sunshine.

I didn't meet any of the Earthwatch people from yesterday - I bet they must have been knackered after the Southall planting (I was!). I recognised Divya, whom I met at the planting in Barnet two years ago, and met Hanna, Johna and other Earthwatchers.

The area where we were to plant the trees looked quite small because of its shape but apparently, it was the Tiny Forest standard 30 square meters. The kids from a local school already planted the first 100 trees. Hanna went to guide them back to school, and I was wondering how the children were going to show up to their lessons covered in mud.

I joined the 11:00 session and discovered that every other volunteer seemed to be from Microsoft. Despite Divya's trip to knock on the locals' doors to invite them to plant the Tiny Forest, we had only 12 corporate volunteers (soon to be The Dirty Dozen), and I was The 13th Warrior. After chatting with a couple of Earthwatch people, I stood there, feeling like a red can of Coca-Cola between two six-packs of Pepsi. I decided to help Divya clean the kiddos' spades.

Time for the briefing! It was quite a long speech, and I learned a few new things about the Tiny Forest, for example, that the oldest one in London, in Hammersmith Park, was planted in 2021, and the trees there are already taller than John from Earthwatch (who was the tallest person at the planting today!). Divya was very kind and mentioned me as a guest and gave GoodGym a shoutout. I think Barnet and Lewisham GoodGyms earned the reputation, but I hope Ealing will follow!

The Microsoft people and I got into the muddy pit with spades and got to work. The event was split into two, so I managed to plant only 30 trees this time, and hopefully left enough for the volunteers coming at 1 pm. We still had time till 12:30, so we started transferring some mulch onto the clay soil. It was quite a relaxing activity, compared to yesterday, as today I was distributing woodchip from small buckets around the trees.

I made the most of the sunny weather and caught just a little bit of rain on my way back home. Luckily, I dodged the hail storm that came later in the afternoon. I hope that the late session had already finished by then and no volunteers and no little trees were harmed.