Thrive little champions, thrive!

On the day that Maidenhead's Tom Dean won Olympic Gold in the 200m freestyle in Tokyo, we were out helping some future champions of our own: the champion carbon-absorbing, oxygen-giving, habitat-providing trees of the future!

When we started working with the team from the Braywick Nature Centre to help create the new Thrift Wood last Summer, we understood that this was a project that would take 200-300 years to come to fruition. We had community missions removing dead saplings and their supportive canes and guards, harvesting acorns, planting acorns, and planting whips of various native species before the December Lockdown. Each session was a little step in the right direction, and today was another little step.

6 of us met in the Ockwells car park, warmed up with a few dynamic stretches and a lap of the junior parkrun 'top field' and then ran through the beautiful parkland beyond to reach the planting site. We met our task owner Alistair there and he explained our task for the evening: identifying living saplings and pulling up the grass around them to allow the sunlight through, encouraging them to thrive. Sheila, Michelle, Juli and Amy worked along the perimeter fence, while Sophie and Kelley focused on one of the quadrants where we planted acorns last Autumn.

We did say goodbye to a few dead little whips, tidying away their canes and protective spirals to be used again, but happily we found plenty living too! It was also really encouraging to see that some of the acorns we had planted had grown into baby Oaks. Nevermind 200 years, in less than one year we can see progress! At the end of our 45 minute session we had tackled about an eighth (8 fence posts worth) of the perimeter and the one quadrant.

We will be coming back for more on Wednesday 11th of August so sign up here! We also plan to list some more community missions for the same task, so keep an eye on the listings for those.

Afterwards we ran the most direct route back to the car park to allow time for....the Olympics! Well, sort of. The events included:

• Athletics (running to that tree and back a few times)

• Weight lifting (lifting a litter picker and whatever rubbish we could find)

• Cycling (upside down to work our abs)

• Swimming (Pilates style to target backs of legs and upper back)

• Surfing (aka squat jumps)

• Taekwondo (more for comedy value than anything as this is definitely not a discipline we have mastered)

Everyone gave it their all and did team GG proud. The medals awarded were in the form of yummy courgettes and beans from Juli's allotment. Some of them were even gold!

Well done to everyone who came along! Thank you to Alistair for another great task and also for taking some of the photos.