Coillte & Easy Treesie celebrate National Tree Day
Coillte & Easy Treesie celebrate National Tree Day – supporting schoolchildren & communities to plant more trees & tackle climate change
Easy Treesie Project aims to plant 1 million trees by 2025, one for each schoolchild in Ireland
7 October, 2021:
Coillte’s Deborah Meghen, Easy Treesie’s Orla Farrell and pupils from Rathdrum Boys National School teamed up at Avondale Forest Park – to plant native wild cherry trees grown in the Coillte nursery to celebrate National Tree Day. The goal is to encourage schoolchildren and their families to plant more trees to help tackle the increasing threat from climate change.
“Trees are not only beautiful to look at,” said Deborah Meghen, Coillte’s Stewardship Director. “They and forests have a very important role to play in our fight against climate change too,” she said.
The Triple Climate Benefit of trees:
- Trees act as a carbon sink, constantly removing carbon dioxide from the air and converting this to oxygen as the tree grows.
- They not only clean the air we breathe, they also store carbon in their trunks and branches preventing it from being released back into the atmosphere as CO2 – which traps warm air exacerbating global warming.
- They produce wood, an environmentally friendly substitute for the construction of homes and buildings.
“Coillte’s Avondale Forest Park, is a beautiful giant playground for children and adults where you can relax and receive a physical and mental health boost from the stunning trees and forest,” said Meghen.
The Wild Cherry Tree is this year’s chosen tree for National Tree Week
- It’s usually found in hedges and flowers with a white or pale pink blossom in the Spring.
- It’s probably not as well known as other native Irish trees such as birch, alder, holly, oak and ash. Its wood is also valued for high quality furniture.
“The goal is to plant a million trees with Ireland’s one million school children and their communities by 2025 as part of the world trillion tree campaign,” said Orla Farrell, Project Founder of Easy Treesie. ”We are delighted that today we are planting our 200,000th tree, in collaboration with Crann – Trees for Ireland and the Tree Council of Ireland.“
For those interested in accessing trees for their local school or community, please contact the Tree Council of Ireland at www.treecouncil.ie.
Ends.
Media queries: For further information or to arrange an interview with a Coillte spokesperson please contact: Pearse Corcoran pearse@carrcommunications.ie +353 87 448 1350
Notes for Editors:
- Coillte plans to donate over 100,000 tree saplings nationwide in partnership with the Tree Council of Ireland and the Easy Treesie Project in 2021. It is also supported by The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine These trees are being planted by school children, adults and community groups across the country this year.
