Birmingham TreePeople

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Birmingham TreePeople

Birmingham TreePeople is a charity. We plant and establish new trees, advocate for all Birmingham's trees and work for greater tree equity 🌳

Birmingham Tree People is a registered charity with the charity no. 1190536

02/10/2026

Autumn is here and it's time to collect seeds and take hardwood cuttings 🌱

As seed heads, pods and fruits reach maturity and start to dispense seeds, it's a great opportunity to collect those seeds for future planting. Doing so teaches us about conservation, seasonality and how we can care and preserve a diverse environment.

The Tree Council have some really helpful resources online that we encourage you to look at.

Autumn and winter is also a good time to take hardwood cuttings because the plants are dormant. Their lack of leaves during this time of year means there is little water loss (transpiration), preventing the cuttings from drying out while they slowly begin to grow new roots.

Thrive kindly let us take some cuttings and seeds from their beautiful space within Kings Heath Park.

A tiny snail tagged along, travelling on some willow back to our nursery space.
A spider was also checking out our privacy policy.

24/09/2026

Tree People volunteer dates at the tree nursery!

Some of the trees in the space will be heading to their permanent homes the coming months so we will be getting them ready for those next steps.

Here is a 𝘒𝘰𝘦𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘢 (Golden Rain Tree) in the space. This time of year they have these fascinating and very elegant, lantern like fruits with dark seeds inside which last through the winter.

Notes:
We can provide gloves, but we’d recommend wearing clothes you don’t mind getting dirty and shoes for all weather and surfaces.

The ground is made up of soil, roots and stones with wood chip paths. It may not be accessible to all visitors. If you have any questions about access reach out to Jenny ([email protected])

23/09/2026

This year’s extreme heat placed establishing trees under immense stress. While our tree planting care plans standardly budget for watering between May and August - when seasonal rainfall typically sustains the trees until dormancy - the severe hot weather meant they required extra care.

Fortunately, local community members in Sparkhill ensured the young trees we planted together remained well-hydrated throughout the heatwaves. We are immensely grateful to everyone who offered their time and support by giving these trees extra water.

Local residents also supported us in writing the text for these new tree tags, which you can now see displayed on the trees across Sparkhill.

10/09/2026

On a sunny day last month we explored Jewellery Quarter's vibrant array of trees with people from the Refugee and Migrant Centre.

We shared tree facts as we mooched around and explored this World Craft City site together, and got to listen to people's stories about trees from their homelands such as Palestine, Ukraine and Afghanistan.

We will be spending more time with the community at Refugee and Migrant centre to select trees, and locations for more trees, in the JQ which will be planted in the coming months.

🌍️🌲

08/09/2026

Meet our Tree Care Coordinator - Fred! 🌲

Fred (he/him) will be growing our volunteer community to help care and foster the ongoing health and growth of trees in our communities. Fred is an artist, educator and researcher, he recently completed his PhD at Birmingham City University which revolved around seasonality and phenology, the study of seasonal timings. In his practice he explores seasonal culture through art in the face of the climate crisis.

His attitude towards tree care comes from being with and being alongside different species, building slow relationships to place. He has been growing bonsai as an enthusiastic amateur for around ten years and inherited a love of growing things from his grandparents.

Fred consistently works with trees throughout his artistic practice as well as being deeply interested in folk relationships to trees and how storytelling and tree histories can bring people together.

This role is funded by Green Community Grants Programme, made possible by the players of the Postcode Lottery.

28/08/2026

Tree Calendar 013

Scientific name: 𝘊𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘢
Common name: Sweet Chestnut

Ward: Edgbaston
W3W location: ///fact.fact.snow

This Sweeeeet Chestnut is a short walk away from the Birmingham Botanical Gardens which is full of even more lush greenery. Designed in 1829 by the landscape gardener and horticulturalist John Claudius Loudon, the gardens are Grade II listed and retain many original features and layout.

Important note on Sweet Chestnut Blight:

The Forestry Commission has stated that the risk of Sweet Chestnut Blight spreading has increased significantly in parts of south-west England.
This is a destructive fungal disease caused by Cryphonectria parasitica which attacks the bark of Sweet Chestnut trees, cutting off nutrients and usually killing the tree above ground within a few years.

Here is some information on spotting Sweet Chestnut blight from Forest Research:

Signs of the disease include discoloured and fissured cankers (areas of dead tissue) on stems, with orange pinhead-sized fungal fruiting bodies and buff-coloured fungal fans under the bark.
It is spread by wind and rain.
Where sweet chestnut are heavily infected, nearby trees of other species can very occasionally be affected by the disease too, though the damage tends to be largely superficial. Horse chestnut trees (Aesculus hippocastanum) are not related to sweet chestnut and are unaffected by the disease.

This tree is Edgbaston is free of blight but if you think you may have spotted Sweet Chestnut Blight you can report this to Tree Alert online.

27/08/2026

Tree People⁠!
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Here are our September volunteer dates. ⁠
Our sweet little Hibiscus tree is flowering right now so consider this an incentive to come visit.
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Notes⁠
*Jenny will not be in the space on the 9th, but Gugan shall and she shall be bringing some art material too
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**19th Sept will be our even-more-than-usual family friendly day, with art materials and activities that explore our decision making processes looking at the species in the nursery, climate resilience and tree equity. Decisions around tree planting affect young people and future generations the most so it is important to us that we find ways to ensure they are part of these important conversations.
⁠
We’d recommend wearing clothes you don’t mind getting dirty and shoes for all weather and surfaces.

👩🏽‍🌾🪏🌳

14/08/2026

Emergency Watering - Please donate if you can.⁠
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Whether it’s a one-off or rolling payment, your contribution supports essential care for young trees through heatwaves and drought, enabling them to take root and helping us all build a climate resilient urban forest.⁠
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https://www.birminghamtreepeople.org.uk/donate

13/08/2026

Trees are one of our greatest defences against extreme heat. ⁠
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Care for our young street trees to help them establish is a vital part of working towards greater tree equity and increased canopy coverage. Without this care, these trees are less likely to survive their first three to five years and are more susceptible to stresses such as drought, soil compaction, frost, pollution, damage, pests, and disease.⁠
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Caring for our older trees is equally vital, as maintaining and preserving them is one of the most effective ways to expand canopy coverage. These mature trees serve as cornerstones of urban biodiversity, providing habitats that support a vast array of birds, insects, and fungi that younger trees cannot yet accommodate. Their preservation is crucial for long-term environmental stability as they store significant amounts of carbon, mitigate urban heat island effect through creating large areas of shade, and manage stormwater more effectively than their younger counterparts. ⁠
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By paying attention to and caring for both established giants and younger trees, we can make informed decisions around aftercare, species selection and location mapping for future tree planting. To date we’ve surveyed over 3,000 of Birmingham’s street trees and have some data on over 75,000. These can be viewed on the Birmingham Tree Map.

11/08/2026

Did you know that Spruce trees communicate during a solar eclipse?

Led by UWE Bristol Visiting Professor Alessandro Chiolerio, a team of scientists from around the world discovered the Norway Spruce trees (Picea abies) can anticipate and collectively respond to a solar eclipse. Detectable up to 14 hours before an eclipse, these trees shift from irregular, multi-patterned electrical signals to more stable and coordinated rhythms during the eclipse.

The study was carried out in the Dolomites' Val di Fiemme (Trento) at 2,000 meters above sea level, where trees were continuously monitored before, during, and after a partial solar eclipse.

This research has been published in Royal Society Open Science, as part of the pioneering “Cyberforest Experiment”, which combines tools from quantum field theory, complex systems science, and biological signal analysis to explore how forests behave as coordinated, living networks.

As we face increasingly extreme heat and drought, studying tree responses to stressors from solar eclipses to severe environmental changes provides vital insights. By exploring things such as chemical signals, sap movement, fungal networks, and other communication systems, we can better understand how trees cooperate and how we can support them, especially within an urban environment.

I wonder what Norway Spruce trees will be saying to each other tomorrow.

You can read more about this exciting work on the UWE website here - https://www.uwe.ac.uk/news/trees-anticipate-eclipse

"Norway Spruce (Picea abies)" by harum.koh is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

"Green Norway Spruce tree tops onto clear blue sky" by Horia Varlan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Plamen Agov • studiolemontree.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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