2019 Tree Planting
In October Karen arranged a small project to plant trees on Mockett Drive in St Peters. A Just Giving page raised £865 in just 4 weeks. BTC donated £230 toward the budget, a local Tree Surgery company donated another £346, the Broadstairs Society donated £20 and individual personal donations, including those from Councillors, brought the total to £1886. This was enough for a comprehensive planting scheme using innovative new anchoring system. Karen worked with TDC Open Spaces team and Trevor Sharp, a local landscape architect, to plan and deliver the scheme. Seven lime trees were planted on Mockett Drive, one in the Memorial Park and another next to Chestnut Drive.
2020 Storm Damage
Then in February and March 2020 the high winds struck and it was too much for some of the trees on Mockett Drive. Residual money in the budget was used to purchase stakes and the trees were re-anchored. We are happy to report that the trees have all leafed out and seem to be no worse for wear for their tough start this year.
Tree Champions
The trees we planted last year now all have a Tree Champion looking out for them. The tree champions work to a shared watering schedule and generally look out for their trees. We do need more tree champions to look out for street trees. If you are interested in adopting your local tree, Karen will be happy to help you get involved, no experience needed. Just get in touch with Karen on treewarden@broadstairs.gov.uk and she will get you set up.
Tree Canopy Project
Karen is involved with a citizen science project to map tree canopy coverage across Broadstairs as a percentage of land usage. The information collected will feed into Government policy. The stats for eachward are as follows and lower than the currently assessed national average of 15.8% across 233 towns. But the national average arrives from both highly forested and totally tree-less landscapes.So the National Average is not something to aspire to; Kenley in Croydon, for example, has a surprisingly high coverage of 39%.
Viking is 14.1%, Bradstoweis 15.1%, Kingsgate is 13.8%, Beacon Road is 16.8% and St Peters is 13.9%. Kingsgate and St Peters have the highest proportion of agricultural land. So overall, our stats are pretty poor, and we need to do much more to protect existing trees and plant more.
TreeZilla Mapping
Karen has started to photograph and map some of the significant trees on the TreeZillawebsite. This is another citizen science project. Anyone can get involved with TreeZilla and Karen would be delighted to get you on board mapping your local trees, the more the merrier. Do get in touch with Karen on treewarden@broadstairs.gov.uk if you would be interested in helping.
Resident Outreach
Karen works with Councillors to meet residents and assist with any tree related queries that come up. She can also come along to do talks on trees if you would like. Karen is also keen to work with local schools to promote an awareness of trees and has a current Enhanced DBS to allow for this.
Projects planned for 2020 (Covid19 permitting) include a Tree Champion meeting, more planting in local parks and St Peters churchyard and organised tree walks.
2020 Tree PlantingOn Wednesday 22nd April Karen McKenzie and husband Terry Oki were joined at Holmes Park by Peter Hasted, from ITTWI, who brought the tree donation.
The Isle of Thanet News – Planting the Norway Maple in Holmes Park