OU in Wales helps grow the Cardiff canopy

Staff at The Open University in Wales recently traded in their keyboards and headsets for spades and hammers and headed over to Adamsdown to take part in a tree planting initiative, Coed Caerdydd.

Created to support Cardiff’s One Planet climate change strategy, the event is a part of a 10-year programme to increase the number of trees in the city. Every year, trees in Cardiff remove around 10.5% of all pollutants emitted by traffic. This includes 7,900 tonnes of carbon which is the same as the annual emissions from 14,000 cars. The project hopes to increase the canopy from 19% to 25%, in aid of the overall goal to make Cardiff a carbon neutral city by 2030.

Chris Engel, Coed Caerdydd Project Manager shared some useful tips on how we can support the initiative:

“People can adopt trees locally and become what we like to call, Tree Guardians. We’re getting more hot, dry summers, which are synonymous with climate change and the warming planet, so it’s essential that people are watering trees in a time of drought.

“Trees will always benefit from a drop of water every day – the larger ones we’ve planted need more – but really anything will help, especially early in the morning or in the evening once the temperature has dropped. That way less water is lost to evaporation.’

People can adopt trees locally and become what we like to call, Tree Guardians. We’re getting more hot, dry summers, which are synonymous with climate change and the warming planet, so it’s essential that people are watering trees in a time of drought.

Chris Engel
Coed Caerdydd Project Manager

‘We’re so proud that our staff have taken part in this wonderful project,’ said Scott McKenzie, OU in Wales Assistant Director and lead on sustainability. ‘Sustainability is at the heart of our aims as a Welsh university, which is why we’re keen to support initiatives like this which can help us move towards net zero. It’s also an issue which is important to many of our staff, so a huge well done to them for volunteering their time.’