The Queen’s Green Canopy: igus® takes part by planting our first 20 trees.
The Queen’s Green Canopy is a nationwide initiative created to mark the Platinum Jubilee of our late Queen Elizabeth. The initiative was due to conclude in December, which marks the end of the Jubilee year, however, due to the passing of the Queen on September 8th and considering the official tree planting season in the United Kingdom is from October to March, the initiative has been extended to include the full tree planting season, concluding in March 2023.
The Queen’s Green Canopy is creating a living legacy with the aim to plant over a million trees in Her Majesty’s name across the nation. This amazing project has had a vast range of schools, businesses and individuals planting trees around the country.
What has igus® done for the Queen’s Green Canopy initiative?
The igus® ‘Green Space’ is part of our “green” focus in the UK, so the Queen’s Green Canopy complimented this goal.
We recently planted twenty oak trees (Quercus Robur) at Salthouse Country Park in Northampton. This is within walking distance of the igus UK facility, which will allow us to watch these trees grow over the years. To ensure we did this correctly, we worked with local contractors Idverde, who supplied the trees for us. The oak trees came from a certified nursery with OHAS grower standard accreditation and were grown in the UK, which again was really important to us.
The 20 trees were planted along a walkway to create an oak corridor through the centre of the park and the leaves will turn igus® orange in Autumn.
Why did igus® choose oak?
When looking at the best type of tree to plant, we considered a range of options. The particular tree that we chose, English Oak (Quercus Robur), supports more wildlife than any other native tree that we could find, and it was nice to use a tree referred to as “English”, especially as we were planting these in memory of our late Queen.
Other key facts for this tree type:
- A mature English Oak can absorb up to 150kg of CO2 a year
- 1.3 billion kg of air pollutants are removed each year by the current UK green spaces so any increase in this helps
- In urban communities, it is believed that trees, if placed in the correct positions and areas, can cool the air between 2 and 8 degrees. In a time where considering the carbon footprint and the impact that we have on climate change, this is again another positive step to helping combat these issues. *the above facts are from https://queensgreencanopy.org/
What’s next for the igus® oak trees?
An additional benefit of oak is that very little maintenance is required. Due to the time of year, there is no need to water the saplings, we have put woodchip down to prevent weeds, we added plastic whips for protection which will naturally shed as the trees grow and the saplings were well established, over two metres tall so already at a good growth.
We will continue to monitor their progress and our tree planting won’t stop here. We are working in partnership with the largest woodland conservation in the UK, The Woodland Trust, to plant trees as part of our chainflex® recycling programme. If you would like to read more about the igus® green initiatives you can read them here or if you want to read more on the chainflex® recycling programme you can do so here.
Giving back to the planet is crucial and the Queen’s Green Canopy is another step towards conserving the natural world, which at this time is essential in order to protect our planet.
To view our trees, click this link, search northampton and we are a blue pin in Brackmills https://queensgreencanopy.org/map-education-hub/qgc-map/#/
