Plant the tree you will not sit under
Whatever you plant now shades somebody who has not been born yet. That is the whole appeal.
The BeingKind editorsPublished How this is written
Why it lands
A tree planted today does most of its useful work — shade, water, air, birds — between thirty and a hundred years from now, which means the planter is guaranteed not to be the beneficiary. That is unusual. Nearly everything people do for the environment is framed around their own future, and this one cannot be: the return goes entirely to strangers. It is also durable in a way almost no other individual act is.
How
A garden, a verge with permission, or a community planting scheme — most councils and wildlife trusts run one and are short of volunteers rather than saplings. Native species, right tree for the space, and water it for the first two summers, which is the part people skip and the reason young trees die.
This is part of
A written list of what else helps in the same situation.
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