Four of us went along on a sunny Saturday to help Treemendous check on the saplings up at Kimberlow Hill.

This involved taking a peek inside each tree guard to see whether its occupant was still alive, then pulling out any weeds, replacing the guard and straightening the stake if necessary. It turns out that tree guards make ideal vertical ant nests - so quite a few of our trees were sharing their living quarters with these high-rise apartm-ants! However, the trees took priority, meaning we had to knock down the nests to make sure the growing tree trunks weren't smothered.

Some essential woodland maintenance was carried out on previously planted trees at Kimberlow Hill. Helping the trees and biodiversity.

Six superb Good Gymers supported Treemendous volunteers to plant 600 tiny trees of 8 native species. The sun shone but the wind was cold (as it tends to be up on Kimberlow Hill). In the final planting session of the season, holes were dug, roots were tucked in, the earth trodden down, cane supports were hammered into place and snug tree guards fitted to protect against those pesky rabbits. I'm sure we'll be back planting again in the autumn but over the summer there will be plenty of opportunities to go back to nurture and protect those small saplings. Sorry about the lack of photos, I was enjoying planting too much 🤭

Sadly I couldn't make it to todays task, but 3 marvellous hardy GoodGymers turned up to help the Treemendous folk plant 550 new trees. Fantastic effort. Thank you.

Although I couldn't proclaim to walk 500 miles.... Together we could (& did) plant 500 trees 🌳 🌲 🌴. 8 types of bare root whips were planted over the morning by 4 Good Gymers, helping 30 TYP (Treemendous) volunteers. During his endeavours, Paul excavated many hidden treasures, well rocks really. Angela was a bundle of energy after having done park run, digging holes, planting trees and then dashing off to walk the dog - all go. A lovely morning.

We arrived to a sea of tree planters! Great to see how many people attend these sessions. The main bulk of the group, including Cara and Lucy, focused on planting new tiny saplings (sticks!) and guard & poling them up, while the rest of GoodGym (plus two lovely people from South Bank Community Garden) headed down to a previously planted area. Here our job was to replace the poor quality cardboard guards that had been defeated by rabbits, or just fallen apart, with (hopefully better quality) new ones from the manufacturers. These were a little fiddly to thread onto the poles but we got the hang of it and had soon finished the pack. Fingers crossed these ones will defeat the relentless rabbits!

Over the hill to the next task!