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

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

10/08/2026

When asked "how are you doing?" during this record-breaking season, our collective response is pretty consistently "It's hot."⁠
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As the trees share information through airborne chemical signals or underground mycelial networks we can suspect they are saying much more than “It’s hot”.⁠
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The impacts of extreme heat manifest in various ways, from trees losing large branches to heat-related deaths, greater tree equity is essential for fostering community resilience. ⁠
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In our latest feature article, Matt explores the effects that this unprecedented heat and drought has on both people and trees, while offering insights into how we can collectively mitigate these pressing issues.⁠
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We organise for all the young trees we plant to be watered over the summer months to help ensure they stay hydrated, giving them around 50 litres per week between May and September. During such times of drought and extreme heat, trees may need even more water than this. The simplest way that we can collectively help in the short term is to water the trees. Water whichever tree is nearest your house or workplace, whichever tree you think is struggling most, the youngest tree, the nicest tree, whatever. This watering could save that tree, the many benefits it gives us and the ones it will give to future generations.⁠

Street Trees for Living have a great breakdown on how we should be looking after young street trees which you can read about below.

https://www.streettreesforliving.org/heatwave-advice

08/08/2026

Our landscape is one that we share with trees, other animals and each other - we must learn from one another to care for each other.

Some of last months tree care activities were supported by Birmingham Open Spaces Forum (BOSF) who work with communities to establish new Friends Of groups and support the volunteers. They are supporting 180+ Friends Groups across Birmingham.

In this midsts of heat and drought a quote they shared with us feels very relevant.

"Across Birmingham, volunteer Friends Groups are quietly doing vital work to care for the trees in their local parks and open spaces - watering young trees during dry spells, clearing weeds from around the base, carefully pruning fruit trees and keeping an eye on how they're doing season to season. Many groups have also been involved in planting new trees, nurturing them from the very beginning and watching them grow as part of the spaces they love. In Sparkhill, Friends of Shakespeare Street and Friends of Sparkhill Park are among those doing exactly this - planting and caring for trees in their local parks and open spaces. But tree care isn't just practical. For many of our volunteers, a particular tree becomes a landmark, a meeting point, something they feel genuinely connected with - the tree that shades your summer picnic with friends and family, or the one you shelter under when the rain comes in. Every tree planted and looked after by volunteers increases Birmingham's green canopy, provides a home for nature in the city and helps mitigate things like air pollution, for generations to come."

There are lots of little and big ways you can help look after our urban forest, water trees where you can, join a friends group, become a Tree Person volunteer or donate.

06/08/2026

On 18th July, we ran a tree care session with the Springfield Project's Youth Volunteers, tending to the tree planting work we completed together in Sparkhill earlier on this year.

This session focused on the trees planted in Sparkhill Park, where they assessed tree health, provided practical care, and created signs for trees without one which shared information about the species.
This was also the introduction to their social action project, which is to design a program that encourages and supports Sparkhill residents in connecting with and caring for these newly planted trees.

To start working on this brief, we discussed the benefits of trees, community perceptions, existing relationships with nature, and the benefits of caring for trees. The group then brainstormed initial concepts to enhance community connection and awareness of tree benefits, such as hosting mindful breathing workshops on blankets under the trees to enjoy their calming effects, organising a tree photography competition, and even talking tree therapy.
With a £50 budget allocated for their project, we are super excited to see what these young volunteers come up with!

29/07/2026

Tree Calendar 012

Scientific name: 𝘛𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢 × 𝘦𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘢𝘦𝘢
Common name: European Lime

Ward: Birchfield
W3W location: ///line.backed.mess

Situated just a short distance away is Holy Trinity Church, a Grade II* listed inner-city parish. Designed by the architect J A Chatwin, it was formally opened and consecrated in 1864.
Since 2010, Reverend Eve Pitts has served as the vicar of Holy Trinity Church. As Britain’s first black woman vicar, she speaks candidly on institutional racism, the colonisation of the image of God, and the exploitation of enslaved people. A wealth of articles and interviews detailing her incredibly generous and important work can be easily found online.

Large trees play a vital role in capturing carbon. According to data recorded by our survey volunteers using a tree plotter, this particular Lime tree has stored over 9,128.53 kg of carbon dioxide. Trees achieve this efficient carbon storage through biomass accumulation across their roots, branches, and trunks.

It is worth noting that despite sharing a common name, these trees have no close relationship to lime fruit trees.

26/07/2026

Become a Tree Person!⁠
Join us for our upcoming volunteer dates in our treeeee nursery.⁠
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We can provide gloves and tools, but we’d recommend wearing clothes you don’t mind getting dirty and wearing supportive shoes.⁠
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If you have any questions about accessibility, ⁠
you can reach out to us at [email protected]

21/07/2026

During the heatwaves our curtains hadn't been opened in days, washing machines were doing over time as our laundry dried at record speed, and we are living off ice lollies.⁠
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We’ve all been finding ways to cope with the heat, but these record-breaking temperatures aren’t ‘just summer’, they are the reality of climate breakdown. Signs of heat stress can be seen in lots of different ways for both trees and people and young street trees are trying to establish themselves in the heat.⁠
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Have you noticed the leaves wilting on trees? Is the bark looking brittle? Does the soil look dry? Tree care is about paying attention to these signs of change.⁠
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If you're out and about today, take a second to check your local trees. A bucket of water can make a huge difference.

20/07/2026

On Saturday we held a celebration gathering to reconnect with all those involved in delivering the Benjamin Zephaniah Forest. We ate food together in the shade of the trees and listened to poetry from Bradley Taylor and Zakariye and incredible music from John’s Drummers. Saida created a space for crafts inspired by the orchard and Patchwork Meadows took people on a pollinator trail to get us thinking about wildflowers in the space.

As with all of our trees, we commit to seeing the trees through to establishment where they should be strong enough to look after themselves, with little intervention. We will be back in the space later on this year to do some tree care with our volunteers and the new Tree Care Coordinator.

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Birmingham

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https://linktr.ee/birminghamtreepeople

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