Celebrations to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee will be happening all throughout 2022 including a national tree planting project called the Queen’s Green Canopy.
In response to the climate emergency, Oxford City Council has planted over 10,000 new trees in its green spaces in recent years, and is now embarking on a programme to plant more hedgerows.
But if we are going to make Oxford a truly green city we also need residents, community groups, organisations, schools and businesses to help grow the green canopy.
More leaves equals more wildlife and less pollution. Learn more about how you can support the Leaves for Life project by planting a tree or hedgerow for the Jubilee.
Leaves for Life explained
As a response to the Queen’s Green Canopy and as an ongoing focus moving forward, Oxford City Council is leading the Leaves for Life campaign, which emphasises the importance of both trees and hedgerows to help the city reach net zero by 2040 (visit our Oxford to Zero pages for more information). Here are some of the benefits of trees and hedgerows:
- They reduce the effects of climate change and support our biodiversity
- They provide us with important services (called ecosystem services) such as carbon capture, reducing flooding, giving us clean air and supporting our health and wellbeing
- They can provide us with beautiful environments that create a sense of place that should be accessible to everyone
- But most important of all, they are sanctuaries that connect us to the natural world and for that we need them to be cherished.
Plant a tree or hedgerow in your own garden
20% of Oxford’s land area is made up of residential gardens, which present a great opportunity for tree and hedgerow planting. We want to encourage anyone with a garden or communal garden to think about planting small fruit trees. Small fruit trees are particularly good for wildlife and don’t take up much space.
See our advice on what and how to plant.
If you are a business, you could buy trees or hedgerow trees to give to your employees
See our advice on what and how to plant.
Plant trees or hedgerows on your land
We are calling all landowners, schools, businesses and institutions etc to see where you may have opportunities to plant trees or hedgerows on your land.
For professional advice and guidance visit the The Arboricultural Association website.
Schools may want to take advantage of the free tree schemes offered by the Woodland Trust and the Tree Council.
Street trees
We have launched a street tree sponsorship scheme in order to cover the high costs of planting and maintaining street trees. This includes the chance to sponsor a new “Jubilee Avenue”. For more information please see our Sponsor a street tree page.
Map your tree
Any tree that you plant in 2022 can be added to the Queen’s Green Canopy interactive map.
Tree Tuesdays on social media
If you want to learn fun facts about the benefits of trees and hedgerows, discover stories of notable Oxford trees and keep up to date with how you can take part, then follow us on Oxford City Council - Twitter, Oxford City Council - Facebook and Oxford City Council - Instagram and keep your eyes peeled for our Tree Tuesday posts!
Further resources
To find out more about Oxford’s trees visit the Trees and our Urban Forest pages of our website.