As we celebrate National Volunteers’ Week, one of our Team Leaders in Finance, Amanda King reflects on her first time planting trees as part of her volunteering.
This year, the volunteers’ week is celebrating its 40th anniversary and is encouraging more people to take a moment and volunteer in communities.
Like many others who volunteer, Amanda believes that the experience felt very rewarding to be involved and to help build a tiny forest with over 600 trees.
Helping to build a biodiverse area that’s roughly the size of a tennis court, Amanda was delighted to be joined by a couple of her colleagues, Katherine, and Ryan, to transform an area of land for local residents and wildlife.
The tiny forest is a partnership between Devon County Council, East Devon District Council and ParkLife Southwest and was joined by hundreds of volunteers of all ages.
Amanda King, Team Leader in Finance for LiveWest, said: “It was brilliant to be a part of the day and help plant a tiny forest in one of our Devon communities.
“It was a really good day. It felt really rewarding to be involved and to help our residents, local wildlife, and nature.
“It will be really interesting to see how it develops as we planted some trees quite close together and others quite far apart.
“When we were planting trees, I thought they were going to be quite big but actually some of them looked like sticks, but they weren’t very big at all!
“There were kids there talking about worms and beetles and getting involved with the planting too. It was really lovely.”
Amanda admits that she’s learnt quite a lot from the experience and is very glad she took the opportunity to make Water’s Edge, our development in Exmouth, a greener place to live.
Delighted by the day, Amanda shares her learnings from the experience. She said: “The process was thoroughly planned so that it will help different wildlife and now, with the new trees there, there will be a lovely mixture of trees at different ages.
“I like being outdoors but I’m not the keenest gardener in the world, so it was really good that we got to learn about the different roots and different types of planting to growth.
“I thought we’d have to dig really big holes, but we did slot planting, so we just put the spade in, wiggled it and made quite a big hole to slot the tree roots in.
“We then had to stamp it down to make sure no air pockets were in the soil because it can create ice. It was quite interesting.
“We had lots of different types of trees and so we didn’t plant two of the same together because they wanted the tiny forest to look diverse when it’s all grown.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing how much the trees have grown in the coming months.”
Headline image sent to us by Exmouth Tiny Forest Group.