Hither Green Lane improvement project

We are pleased to promote the efforts of friends in the borough who are attempting to get more street trees planted in an effort to tame traffic and improve the overall amenity value of their local streets. Stephanie writes from Hither Green: 

30 seconds well spent!

We would like to share the news about another Community-led initiative with you. A small group of Hither Green residents launched a Petition for a safer and greener Hither Green Lane.

The Petition is urging political decision-makers and Council to fund the planting of new trees on Hither Green Lane, in addition to significant streetscape improvements. Currently, there are only very few street trees, if any, on Hither Green Lane.

It is about creating a healthy and inviting environment that people feel safe in and want to spend time in. New trees will be key to this. Securing this change will hopefully be an enabler for supporting potential change in other areas such as improving air quality, increasing attractive shop-fronts and reducing antisocial behaviour.

There is no age restriction on who can sign the Petition. Please, make sure your husbands, wives, partners, daughters and sons sign too! Signatures are only accepted as valid from persons who live, work or study in the Borough of Lewisham.

Please, help spread the word, talk with neighbors and friends and share the Petition on your social media.

Many thanks.

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/hither-green-lane-streetscape-improvements

Street Trees for Living

Street Trees for Living is the new name for Brockley Society's street tree campaign. We are delighted to report that the total raised since 2012 looks set to be enough to fund 250 street trees - with about half of these already labelled and planted. In the last year alone it raised £18,000. This was from a Brockley Assembly grant, fundraising events and a fantastic 70% from local residents. 

Flowering cherry in a Lewisham street 

All this has allowed us to bid for a similar amount through a scheme offered two months weeks ago by the office of the new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. His objective is eventually to increase London’s tree cover by 5% (from 20% to 25%). This would be achieved by supporting local communities, businesses and civil society in improvements to neighbourhoods through tree-planting and associated activities. The present bid would fund 75 additional street trees along the streets of Lewisham, many in Brockley ward. There are strong hopes of success. If all goes well, further bids will be possible. 

This activity was part of Brockley Society’s new Street Trees for Living programme, run in partnership with Lewisham Council. The creation of the programme is marked by exciting new projects for the year ahead. These include continued efforts to raise community awareness with the launch of a schools outreach project. The committee would welcome requests from local schools for information talks to students, as well as their participation in the Street Trees for Living logo competition (details to be issued soon).

Street Trees for Living is currently managing several schemes of multiple planting. These will become apparent within Brockley ward in Foxberry Road and Vanguard Street, as well as across the borough. These successes have often been the result of neighbours coming together to develop a planting scheme for their street. If you'd like to discuss the role of tree co-ordinator for your street, or are interested in helping Street Trees for Living in any way, please contact Dom Eliot on trees@brockleysociety.org.uk 

Street Trees for Living

Brockley Society Tree Committee 

Labelling the legacy

During the summer readers may have noticed the appearance of new dark green labels on more than one hundred trees planted in and around Brockley since 2012. 

The labels are one of the Tree Committee’s initiatives to publicise the scheme, delivered in partnership with Lewisham Council. In this era of desperately tight budgets, the council has been a willing partner in an initiative to build on the green legacy of a more affluent time. We enjoy over 10,000 trees on Lewisham streets but according to the council's own records, there are around 2,000 unused pits, and countless potential planting sites. All await trees!

For this winter's planting, we have raised money for dozens of individual trees, and we have agreement in principle for several larger schemes. Please watch this space!

In appreciation of sponsorship so far, and to alert readers to the possibility, the Tree Committee wants to remind readers that all planting is the result of local fundraising efforts and generosity. Brockley is incredibly lucky in this regard, and with your help will continue to be so. Private residents, businesses and local assembly members have all given time and energy and funds to enable the planting. Equally important, the scheme has benefitted from regular and practical help. For every tree, Brockley Society works with a local volunteer willing to water the tree for its first two years.

Community organisation - Basic Tree Care

Earlier this week, Rick Farr, Tree Officer with Lewisham Council's Green Scene gave the first of a series of lessons to members of the local community involved in the care and maintenance of our burgeoning stock of newly planted street trees. 

Rick talking to our volunteers on Hilly Fields

Our trained volunteers are either members of the Brockley Society Tree Committee or interested enthusiasts who will be the first port of call for anyone concerned about Brockley's newly-planted trees.

This is the first in a series of new initiatives that have come out of our regular Breakfast Club meetings and we hope to be letting you know about others in the coming weeks and months. If you are interested in volunteering your services, please do get in touch using the "Contact us" tab above.  

Mission accomplished!

A special day for the Brockley Society Tree Committee and our latest group of sponsors and donors. This Silver Birch was planted on Crescent Way, Brockley today and is the last of 36 street trees to be planted by The Brockley Society in this planting season. 

The picture shows Dionyssis Dimitrakopoulos, the volunteer warden of the tree who will water and keep an eye on it as part of the planting scheme we are running in association with Lewisham Council/Green Scene.

We are looking forward to gathering more interest from local residents and businesses over the course of this year and planning for the 2015/16 planting season has already begun. 

The Tree Committee
The Brockley Society

2015 spring - record new street tree plantings

With the dwindling funds available for Lewisham Council to replace and plant new street trees, local residents have been coming on board in ever greater numbers to purchase/part-fund new trees for their streets. 

This year, along with a host of individuals, households and neighbourly collectives, we have also been greatly helped by an extremely generous individual donor who has come forward. We were also successful in making an application to the Brockley Ward Assembly for funds. 

All told, we are just completing the planting of THIRTY SIX new street trees in and around the conservation area. This is an amazing achievement, and we are hopeful that we can continue this level of planting in the coming year. What is also evident is that the model is spreading out to other parts of the borough, including St Johns, Ladywell and Crofton Park. 

In the current planting season, 17 out of the 36 plantings which we have facilitated are actually outside the conservation area, specifically in the following streets - Arabin Road, Brockley Cross, Ermine Road, Malpas Road, Millmark Grove, Shardeloes Road, and Strickland Street. In the previous two planting seasons, the figure is 11 trees outside the conservation area, out of 16 total planted. So as you can see, we are doing our best to cast our net as widely as possible (details of where these new trees have been planted will be uploaded to the map on the "New Plantings" tab on our blog in due course). 

One of three Juneberry trees (Snowy Mespilus) planted in 
Breakspears Road on February 6th, with members of the Glendale 
planting team that work with Lewisham Council, and Nicola 
Ferguson of Brockley Society Tree Committee

Realistically, with the ongoing losses of existing street tree stock (due to old age and disease), this is the only way we will maintain the leafy character of our streets and ensure that the local street environment is maintained and, hopefully, enhanced. 

With thanks to Lewisham Council's Green Scene team and Glendale, their contractors, for their work in getting these trees in the ground over the last few weeks.

Postscript: an earlier version of this post suggested that these three trees planted in Breakspears Road were sweet almonds. Sadly, this was not the case as we discovered when we checked the actual planting schedule, but the Juneberry, or Amelanchiers Lamarckii, is also a beautiful early flowering small tree - it has bright red berries that the birds feast on in late May, early June. 

Calling all tree lovers!

Proudly announcing the second of our Street Tree Enthusiasts gatherings following the lively and productive inauguration of these events last November. Lots of news to talk about, and the announcement of our commemorative tree initiative. 

Come and join us!

Tree Committee event

Sunday March 22nd  11.30am – 12.30pm

at

The Talbot

2 Tyrwhitt Road, Brockley, SE4 1QG - just in from Lewisham Way

 tea/coffee and cakes provided

 Following the success of our first event in November 2014, the Tree Committee is once again hoping to meet anyone who wants to see new street trees in Brockley.  At the same time we are launching our commemorative tree scheme.

BrocSoc Tree Committee in conjunction with the Tree Council and Lewisham Council's Tree Warden scheme

Supporting our Tree Wardens

At a recent Tree Committee meeting we decided to try something new to gather together and support the considerable number of Tree Wardens who have come forward to offer their support. 

We are very pleased to announce the first of a series of events to celebrate our Tree Wardens and the work that they do in helping to fund and/or look after our street trees, a get together on 

Sunday 23rd November at 11.30 am 

We will be repeating these events at 4 monthly intervals throughout the coming year.

They are intended to be informal opportunities to get together, disseminate information, support each other and share the workload. 

We very much look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on 23rd November. 

Trees in the City - 26th April 2014 - Conference Report

The Brockley Society Tree Committee are delighted to report a little more fully about the presentations given at our hugely successful conference last month. 

Wake up and smell the pollution

Lewisham Mayor Sir Steve Bullock opened the conference by raising the issue of rising city pollution and the need for more trees to make the urban environment sustainable. He kindly stayed with us for the opening presentation by Tom Armour. 

Can’t stand the heat? 

Tom Armour, founder and Director of Arup’s Landscape Architecture business gave a fascinating talk about the benefit of urban trees. He showed how the greenest areas in London can be as much as 8 degrees C cooler than the most built up areas. The cooling effect of (large) tree canopies has been well known for some time, but never shown so graphically for the lay audience.

Bring back the birch

Professor Barbara Maher (whose work we reported on here back in October 2013) gave a video-conference talk from Lancaster and presented her celebrated research showing that silver birch trees reduce pollution even at a very local level. Many of us in the audience were struck with the insidious way in which these tiny 'particulates' (from car and lorry diesel fumes) get deep into the lungs. We were surprised at how small the birch trees were in the research experiment (so we don't need to wait until they are mature to reap the benefits!). 

The Silver Birch tree screen in situ for Barbara Maher's important research
Photo courtesy of Barbara Maher

Dwindling resources

A panel discussion which included Lewisham Planning and Lewisham GreenScene highlighted the problem of dwindling council funding and increased pressure to fell trees from insurance companies. Keith Sacre, from Barcham Tree Nurseries, also on this panel, had great ideas on what species to replace lost trees with, and he very generously brought a pile of beautiful hardback catalogues which he donated to the conference attendees (he is happy to supply more if people ask).

Logging the blog

Eamonn, one of our tree committee, demonstrated this blog (which has now passed 10,700 page hits since it started in October 2012!). 

Chainsaw Massacre

Cllr Darren Johnson introduced the afternoon discussing the findings of his (2007) report (blogged here in 2012). Again the issue of contentious pressure from insurance companies to fell trees was raised.

Living legacy

Rachel Mooney from Friends of Hilly Fields gave a fascinating talk showing some amazing photos of Edwardian Brockley with saplings where there are now mature trees on Hilly Fields. It was a sobering reminder that we need to continue planting to protect and extend this legacy.

Photos courtesy of FoHF and Phil Hall

Bearing Fruit

Lewis McNeill from the London Orchard Project in Hackney  showed us pictures of some innovative planting – tiny gardens on street corners or at bus stops tended by local people; apricot trees in Hackney bearing fruit, and fruit trees growing up vertical end-of-terrace walls!  The involvement of local people is crucial for getting these projects off the ground, and then for sustaining them, as they do, by active monitoring, mulching and watering these vulnerable new plantings. He went on to emphasise how young people start to feel protective of "their" trees once they have invested their time and effort in planting them! 

Greening your street

Anthony, one of our tree committee, explained how our scheme developed with Lewisham Council can help Brockley residents fund new trees for their streets.

No blame no claim

Our afternoon panel* discussed practical issues about managing our existing trees and trees being wrongly blamed for subsidence. This is a serious threat to our tree stock and at the moment legal protection for trees is weak. This is something we intend to campaign on at a London-wide and national level. At the end of the panel discussion Angelo very generously offered to donate funds to purchase a new street tree for us, for which we are very grateful. 

Pump up the volume

Our last speaker was Andrew Wilson, Director of Garden Design Studies at the London College of Garden Design. He reminded us that trees are 'greenery in 3D' and showed great examples of small gardens where dwarf trees add a large volume of greenery/canopy without compromising space (many of our new plantings are very immature trees and will provide little in terms of canopy cover for many years - and as Tom Arbour showed us so graphically in the opening presentation, mature canopy is what provides the cooling effect).  

* Angelo Morgan from TreesUK Tree Surgeons, John Bellman, a consulting Civil and Structural engineer and Richard Evans, Vice Chair of the London Tree Officers Association

Again, our grateful thanks to all who presented, and to all who made the conference such a success (not least the excellent support given us by the staff of LeSoCo on the day, and in the run up to the conference). 

All of us on the Brockley Society Tree Committee 

New Arrivals

We are very proud to announce the next round of new street tree plantings in and around the conservation area. 

Here are some early morning pictures taken in Millmark Grove in mid December: 

The majority are joint-funded trees with costs being shared between Green Scene (Lewisham Council) and individuals and groups of neighbours interesting in preserving the street trees in their patch. 

We will be updating our "New Plantings Map" in the next few days with full details of the trees and their locations. If you are interested in entering into this kind of arrangement with the council, have a look at the "Tree Sponsorship" tab at the top of the page for more details.

Changing Of The Guard

After a spate of vandalism against our newly planted (2013) street trees earlier this year, your Brockley Society Tree Wardens have been working with the council's Green Scene to find and re-cycle redundant tree guards around the conservation area. 

This guard in Tressillian Road has done 
its job and will be recycled

So far we've identified about 15 guards that can be removed and re-sited. The job of refitting them to provide protection for our still-vulnerable street trees will go ahead in the next few weeks. 

If you spot a tree guard that looks like it's done its job, please drop us a line at 

trees@brockleysociety.org.uk

… and we will pass on the details to the council. 

Thanks!

Vivat Ulmas!!

Jubilee Tree Planted in Hilly Fields

On Wednesday 22nd May, a disease resistant Elm tree was planted in the eastern section of Hilly Fields to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II. 

Photo courtesy of Karl Brandt

This was a tremendous honour for Brockley being as it was one of only sixty sites across the UK chosen by The Tree Council who are coordinating this initiative, and who supplied the tree. 

Over sixty people attended on the day, from toddlers and teenagers, to octogenarians. 


The ceremony was mostly coordinated by our very own Brockley Society Tree Warden Nicola Ferguson, who was ably helped by students from Prendergast Hilly Fields College, members of the Brockley 50+ Club, the Friends of Hilly Fields, John Thompson, Head of Lewisham Council's Green Scene, Jon Stokes, Programme Director at The Tree Council and our very own eminent local resident, Sybil Phoenix MBE, OBE, founder of the Marsha Phoenix Memorial Trust, a Supported Housing Project for single homeless young women. 

The proceedings were added some drama with the arrival of two police officers from the Lewisham Mounted Branch.

Grateful thanks to Glendale for preparing the ground ahead of the planting, and to Jon Stokes of The Tree Council for these photos (unless noted otherwise)

Kick-off for Twelve Trees

This post marks the introduction of our New Plantings map (see the tab above) which details the additions to the street tree stock from 1st March 2013.

Thanks to the generosity of a number of Brockley residents, the conservation area (and beyond) is now home to twelve new street trees, in part, replacing many of the mature trees removed in 2012 due to disease. These trees have been match-funded, with residents sharing the cost 50:50 with Lewisham Council. 

We have attempted to meet the specifications given by our residents whilst also trying to increase the diversity of the species we use, primarily to reduce the risk to our current stock of public space trees from diseases and unusual climactic conditions due to global warming. 

In this rather cold, grey spring, the new trees are not much to look at, but we thought we would give you a flavour of some of what's to come: 

Two Callery Pear, pyrus calleryana, (an ornamental pear native to China and Vietnam) have been planted in Shell Road (on the Lewisham side of the conservation area) and in Wickham Road. Here's a beautiful mature specimen in New York, USA (photo courtesy of plantsystematics.org at Cornell University): 

A River Birch, betula nigra, (native to eastern USA) has been planted in Tyrwhitt Road, noted for its fabulous autumn colour and exfoliate bark (it peels!). 

And in Breakspears Road, a classic, the Sweet Almond, prunus dulcis, (native to the Middle East and South Asia), the source of almonds and almond oil. Though nothing special in terms of summer foliage, it is stunning in bloom, and very attractive to honey bees, on which it relies for pollination: 

And, for this post, last, but certainly not least, a new oak for Hilly Fields, generously sited in Hilly Fields at the request of a resident of Hilly Fields Crescent. This a quercus robur, (European native), also known as  English or Pendunculate Oak: 

Quercus robur - Hilly Fields

We will post updates about these new plantings in the coming months, and will post in situ photos once the summer arrives and there is something to show you!

Six more trees will be planted in the coming months in collaboration with the Pepys Community Forum.  Watch this space! 


Nicola, Anthony, Eamonn & James
Tree Wardens
The Brockley Society

Archive: Brockley Society Newsletter article - October 2012

This article originally appeared in the Brockley Society Newsletter in October 2012. Please note that the current prices for sponsoring a street tree can be found on our blog here.

Oxygen in Brockley ... and trees

If you're interested in a simple way to improve air quality and a lot else in Brockley, I think you'd better read on.

The Brockley Society's Tree Wardens are a growing team of volunteers who believe passionately about our inherited tree stock and the real threats to it. But we need your help. Your contribution, however small, could make a vital difference to the environment of Brockley. Lewisham Council want to help plant new trees and is therefore contributing half the funds to plant 12 young trees, as part of our ongoing strategy. 5 still remain, so get in there quickly to achieve a street tree outside your home for only £120. You can fund it yourself or talk to your neighbours about splitting the cost. 

When we hear from you, we'll check the ground to ensure an appropriate site, inquire if you had a particular tree type in mind and ask the council to act on it. Don't worry if you can't fund one because just as importantly, we are looking for 'Tree Guardians' in every street. We need people to help ensure young trees are initially cared for and watered, with any problems reported. So let us know if you are interested. 

We don't think it has ever been more obvious that if we want to improve our environment and achieve a better life for our community and future generations, it's necessary to act. I know I go on about it (!) but I believe passionately that democracy is surely about knowing what you want, standing up for what you believe and ensuring goals are achieved. There are remarkable people in Brockley; largely unsung heroes, striving to improve our lives every day. I for one want to join their ranks and help, in however admittedly small a way, to make a difference. As individuals we can make very little impact but together we are a powerful force, knowing that ultimately, our destiny can never be left to others. 

With your help, the Tree Wardens will continue building a relationship with the council and other bodies, working to promote maintenance and replacement of trees and informing you about progress [here on the blog and in the Newsletter]

If you'd like to help in any way please email: trees@brockleysociety.org.uk

Anthony Russell

Anthony heads the Society's Tree Wardens and is author of the book 
'Evolving the Spirit - From Democracy to Peace.'