On a cold and damp Saturday morning, 25 hardy Envision staff, volunteers and students gathered at HainaultForest to attempt to smash a World Record! The Woodland Trust teamed up with the BBC to smash the record for the most trees planted in an hour by 100 volunteers, and create a new woodland in the process.
Our team did an amazing job, planting 1,996 trees in an hour. Two Envision students even got interviewed by the BBC. I don’t think any of us was quite prepared for how muddy it was, good for planting, not so good for those of us wearing white trainers!
The record previously stood at 18,124, and the aim was to hit 20,000. This means each planter needed to plant a tree every 15 seconds! Three sites were involved in the tree planting, and all broke the previous record; Hainault with 20,312 trees, Heartwood with 20,326, and Derry with a whopping 26,422 trees!
So altogether, 70,000 trees were planted in just one hour. And it was worth it to think that if we went back in 50 years, that field would be a forest. Here's the Woodland Trust's video about the day:
