Greening the UK

There has been plenty of research on the effects of planting in our towns and cities over the past few years. Did you know that it reduces noise and pollution, it reduces anti-social behaviour and can reduce crimes by as much as 52% in building projects? We all know that trees can improve hospital recovery rates and adds value to properties on new private developments but did you know they also improve workplace productivity and reduces sick leave by 23%!

I recently came across a new campaign that aims to increase green planting and soft landscaping in new urban private developments – a laudable aim that few of us would argue against. It’s fronted by The Horticultural Trades Association that represents groups like plant growers and garden centres.

The environmental benefits of urban planting are even more important as we experience more extreme climates. Planting can provide insulation for houses with green roofs saving money on energy bills and trees shading houses so keeping our houses cool in the summer. It also reduces the possible impact of flooding – an increasingly important factor.

So what’s so surprising about these facts and figures is that most of our local authority councillors know all this and still don’t do much with this knowledge in planning their decisions and policies. This new campaign aims to change that by supporting local authorities with policies to include urban planting in their development frameworks.

Greening the UK is currently surveying councillors’ attitudes to green planting and urban landscaping and whilst over half say that they think urban planting is increasing more than that say that developers standards in green planting were never or seldom checked! A straw poll of my colleagues shows that actually we were cutting down more urban trees than were being planted. What do you think? Well the statistics show a 50% decline in plants on new developments over the past ten years and 70% of councillors claim that in the last year developers have failed to deliver the green planting outlined in approved planning documents. So maybe it’s time to reverse this and get more planting in our streets, parks and housing developments.

What can we all do to get more trees and shrubs planted?

Most local authorities have a volunteer bureau and if enough of us contact them and suggest that we’d like to volunteer for planting duty they just might get the message that there is a lot of goodwill and free labour out there to do things like clear up derelict parts of parks, plant new trees, tidy up play areas. I’ve been involved in a number of projects where as many as 100 people turned up on a Saturday to help plant beds that hadn’t seen a new plant since the 1950s! The impact on these volunteer groups and the wider community is great.

Another idea is to suggest to your boss that for that next team building day you might get together with a local charity like Age Concern and revive one of their community gardens. We’ve run similar days for local groups and had a great time where everyone has benefited.

If you’re not into organised group activities then you can still help on an individual level. One of the things that gets me most annoyed is that occasionally the Council will part some new street trees and then no-one looks after them. We’ve all got a tree near our house so how about going out with a bucket of water during the summer to help it thrive through the hot months.

And finally you can write to your councillor to highlight the issues, ask them to support the campaign and ask them to place the model motion before council. Write to your MP and ask them to lobby at national and local level or ask them to raise the issue in the House of Commons. And write to your local newspaper and trade publications to tell them about the issues and how this has affected your local area.

Lets hope that the next few years will see a re-greening of our streets and parks which will benefit all of us and the wildlife that we share our neighbourhoods with.