bristol needs more Tree Champions – some parts of the city still have no one!
What is a Tree Champion?
Put simply, a Tree Champion it is someone who wants to see Bristol’s trees protected and new ones planted. This is all the experience you need. We will help you with the rest.
Tree Champions usually focus on the trees in their local ward, but this need not always be the case, as some wards may be too large for one person to cover, or there may be special areas that need particular care, such as some of our larger parks and open spaces.
These are the current Bristol wards:
Being a Tree Champions is a learning experience and can be very fulfilling. At first you might only want to be involved with finding new tree planting sites or checking how your local trees are doing and reporting any issues you find, but over time you may start help with fund raising or, if you like, get involved with checking planning applications in your area to help to defend existing trees or becoming involved in some of our other, longer-term projects. You only need to get involved as much as you want to, though.
We will also provide help as you need it. We have lots of experience championing Bristol’s trees.
How can I Volunteer?
If you would like to take on this important role and help guard and grow Bristol’s wonderful urban forest, please complete this form and send it to us.
Hi Mark. I assume the link that FON has added to BTF ‘page’ is useful?
I do not understand how this functions so I hope what I have agreed to is useful?
Will it been seen by our T C’s? Help me to understand please? Jim IT ignoramus!
I was very inspired by Jimmy’s Big Bee rescue programme and also a local residential street near me, frobisher road, bs3. It is a small street that unsually for south bristol has some trees and residents have planted wild flowers around the base. It’s so lovely. It made me think many of the streets in bs3 are Victorian terrace with very small gardens and if often no front gardens. What about if there was a scheme to give over half a car park space to a raised bed for a small/slow growing, bird friendlytree or shrub like a holly, silver birch, rowan etc with bulbs or wild flowers underneath. This could happen every 50 meters on both sides of road. To create a zig zag wildlife corridor. Many streets now have whats app groups and coukd become custodians but need the idea to spread and permission.
Hello.
My name is Allan Watson and I am Chair of ReACH (Residents’ Association Charlton Hayes), which is in North Bristol.
We have been notified about an occurrence of Ash dieback in one part of our large development, but we are particularly concerned about South Glos Council’s plans to remove some trees from our iconic Hammond Road Tree Line, some of which could be up to ten metres high.
We are trying to discuss options, but it seems this decision is partly based on saving costs. They wanted to do it now, but the Lockdown has caused a delay until bird nesting season is over. We need to talk to ‘experts’ to help fight our case.
Can you help?
Hi Allan – can you email us via our Comments page. Then we can reply directly. Normally Ash dieback is not a reason for felling trees unless they present a public Health & Safety Issue. Here is some guidance from the Arboricultural Association – https://www.trees.org.uk/Help-Advice/Public/Ash-Dieback-%E2%80%93-Practice-Guidance – which might help. Also, if trees have to be removed then we argue that they should always be replaced.
Hi. Really sorry, but I missed your message here. Thanks for coming back to me anyway. As a residents’ association, we have two problems here. Firstly to try to stop the Council from removing some of our iconic 30ft trees and replace them with 12ft new trees. The reasoning is that the disease is ‘in the region’. Secondly to get a dialogue going between the Council, the local developers and the residents/general public to discuss options and general feelings. I do have much more I can say and show you, but I hope that may do for now. Thanks.
You can use chat GPT to help with many of these issues. There are free versions too
I agree with Caroline Hope. It seems a uphill struggle at the moment, with `Developers` cutting down trees quicker than we can replace them! In most cases, with`whips`! (46 cm tall seedlings.)
Trees are essential to our existence.