Trees of Hope in Zimbabwe

A rainy season initiative

As we enter the peak pf the rain season our juniors at the Trees of Hope Saturday Club have embarked on an exciting project to upgrade the tree nursery. The initiative is important for promoting environmental sustainability, supporting biodiversity, enhancing the community and schools’ ecological footprint and health.

Background

Our Trees of Hope project has been actively involved in environmental conservation efforts, recognising the importance of trees in mitigating climate change, providing shade, food, herbs (as medicine) and supporting local wildlife. Our existing tree nurseries have been planted in and around the Trees of Hope site, community and in the school food forest.

Objectives

The primary objectives of this project are to:

1. Expand our tree nursery capacity to accommodate a wider variety of tree species
2. Improve the infrastructure of facilities within the nursery ensure optimal growing conditions
3. Enhance our tree planting and maintenance practices to ensure the long term sustainability of our efforts. 

Activities

To achieve our objectives we have undertaken the following activities:

1. Tree species selection – we have selected a diverse range of tree species including our indigenous herbal tree and fruits and exotic fruit bearing trees to plant in our upgraded nursery

2. Progress and impact – we are excited to say that our upgraded tree nursery is already showing signs of success. Our new infrastructure and expanded capacity has enabled us to plant over 300 dewormed lucky bean tree (mutiti), 30 mubve, 400 mutohwe seeds and 600 musekesa seeds which are thriving under our care. We anticipate that those trees will not only support our local diversity our need to cover the wide range as we want also to provide shade, improve air quality, health and fruits and serve as a valuable educational resource for our juniors, community, ward, province up to the national level.