Tree Planting at Mudchute

The School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Met is set to plant another 420 trees at Mudchute City Farm, using saplings acquired as part of the Woodland Trust’s Free Trees for Schools and Communities scheme. The project will create 100 metres of hedge for the important tasks of providing food and shelter for wildlife, addressing carbon emissions, air quality and biodiversity loss.

All students from the School of Art, Architecture and Design and Empowering London are welcome to join the planting event, which will take place on 30 November 2022, with first-year students particularly encouraged. There will be two sessions (morning and afternoon) and it is essential that staff and students book in advance.

As Siân Moxon, senior lecturer in Architecture, says, “We want every student to plant a tree during their studies, as part of acknowledging and taking responsibility for their own ecological footprint, before learning to influence others’ lifestyles through sustainable practice.”

The project will create 100 metres of hedge with a mixture of tree species including hawthorn, rowan, blackthorn, silver birch, hazel and common oak, for the important tasks of providing food and shelter for wildlife, addressing carbon emissions, air quality and biodiversity loss. Each tree could offset 1 tonne of carbon over its lifetime.

This comes as part of the University’s commitment to addressing the environmental challenges facing the capital city through the London Met Lab, as well as the work of the School to ‘rewild’ urban areas through its Cities research group.

The School has a proud history of delivering proactive environmental initiatives, such as the announcement of Architecture Education Declares (AED) in 2019, which its students helped to launch. The Art, Architecture and Design Education Declares manifesto `builds environmentalism into the School’s education practice, stating that solutions to the ecological crisis we face are rooted in good architecture and design.

The tree-planting event builds on the University’s ongoing relationship with Mudchute City Farm, where the School holds an annual technology workshop for its Architecture students.

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