'It will be beautiful to see our kids grow up with this': how communities around the world are planting trees

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/19/communities-around-the-world-planting-trees-cities

‘It will be beautiful to see our kids grow up with this’: how communities around the world are planting trees

City residents are working out how to fill their streets with trees as evidence grows of their benefits

By Olivia Lee
Sat 19 Apr 2025 03.00 EDT

“I wanted to do something that would benefit as many people from the community as possible,” says Chloe Straw, pointing at a small but promising sapling visible through the window of her local cafe.

In 2023, Chloe began chatting to her neighbours in Haringey, north London, about trees. “I thought it’d be really nice to raise some money for trees on the main road. Everyone uses West Green Road, regardless of whether you have a lot of money or not, regardless of your background.”

After getting in touch with Trees for Streets, a sponsorship scheme that guides communities across England on how to plant trees in their local areas with support from local councils, a small group was formed to work out how to do it. As a first step, Straw and friends were provided with an interactive map to choose the location of the trees, and that was passed along to Haringey council.

Then they got help to set up a crowdfunding campaign, which was shared in local WhatsApp groups and community forums, secured 168 backers and raised more than £6,000 in one month.

Mohamed al-Jawhari, a co-chair of Haringey Living Streets, said: “It [WhatsApp] is a very powerful tool for getting a very simple message out very quickly to a lot of people. I got in contact with, like, a thousand people in a few minutes, because I forwarded on the message with a bit of an explanation to a local group here, a local group there, people who were interested in the environment and maybe wanted to help West Green.”

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