Location - Hertford Junior School, Brighton

Date - March 2007

Trees - 500 trees - a mix of Oak, Ash, Silver Birch, Rowan and Green Beech.

Notes - Hertford Junior School encourages their children to take an interest in environmental issues through making best use of the wonderful grounds and learning through nature.  They have an active eco-club and their work was highly commended at the city's most recent 'Environmental Oscars'.

The planting forms part of a bigger school project to develop the school grounds to improve their biodiversity and educational worth. These trees will form one of the first parts of the project and will help to provide a strip of woodland that will also act as a shelter belt helping to protect the rest of the grounds and providing protection for other elements such as an orchard. The site at present is quite open as it is on the edge of the downs and quite high up.
Forming part of the school grounds it will be open daily for use by the children and opened regularly for open days and the like. Volunteer work days are held every month and the trees form part of the school boundary backing on to a public open space.
Hertford Junior school is one of the schools that have signed up to the school BAP manifesto which is a commitment to improve their grounds especially to develop biodiversity and prevent habitat loss. Following a school grounds audit, it was decided to classify school grounds as a habitat in their own right and a BAP was subsequently written,firstly as a pilot project to form the first stage of the Local BAP.
The school is adjacent to a local nature reserve and surrounded by chalk grassland with associated flower and invertebrate species. Reptiles, badgers and even Dartford Warblers have been noted in the immediate vicinity.