Tree o’clock

By Jack McCabe and Ollie Clymer
Eco Council reps and pupils at Ravenscroft Secondary School and Martin Primary School got together on Saturday 5 December in a global attempt to break the world record for planting trees at a single site in one hour.

The record to beat was 18,124. After one hour’s hard work, our joint efforts meant we had managed to plant 300 trees, which had been donated by the local taxi firm Greater London Hire.

We kids were not alone in this attempt as teachers and other school staff, such as Tristan Green our caretaker and Suzy Osborne, who works in the school office, joined in as well. Mr Green said: “It was hard but in the end very rewarding.”

We are now looking forward to watching the trees, which include ash, oak and hawthorns, start to grow on our school field.

John Scott, managing director of Greater London Hire, said it was a great privilege to be involved. “We’re extremely lucky,” he said, “that Martin School and indeed East Finchley have the playing field. It will be lovely to watch the trees grow over the years, and to think that many years hence some of the planters will be able to point out the trees we planted to their own grandchildren.”

The two schools didn’t smash the record but three other tree-planting sites around the UK did. Also, the Martin and Ravenscroft trees will count towards a record for the most trees planted at any number of sites in one hour. The total is still being counted. Read more about tree o’clock at the BBC Tree O’Clock website www.bbc.co.uk/treeoclock.

Back