All In A Days Work - Jo Hurst, London Projects Manager, Trees For Cities

Trees for Cities is an environmental charity with a
noble cause. "To tackle global warming, create
social cohesion and beautify our cities through
 tree planting, community, education and training
initiatives in urban areas of greatest need."

The organisation works in cities across the UK
and overseas, creating planting projects
that improve the quality of life of city dwellers and
helps improve urban wildlife habitats.

It is not a suprise that estate agents use the
description 'Leafy Suburb' as a positive attribute to
sell an area. More exculsive areas of cities are
often heavily landscaped, which help add to an
areas appeal. Landscaping and planting trees in
deprived areas can have a great positive impact
on the areas image and also the life of local
residents.

Like every good organisation, the charity relies on
its hardworking staff to meet its targets and aims.
Jo Hurst is the London Projects Manager and is
part of a team that are helping to reach the target of planting 1 million trees in London by 2012! During the planting seasons 2002/03 to 2006/07 a total of 425,000 new trees were planted in London, so Jo has obviously been busy and she has even found had time to write about a typical day for our readers, thanks Jo! You can find out more about Trees for Cities at their website treesforcities.org where you can sponsor a tree, donate or help in other ways.

Jo Hurst's Day

07:00 Sit on tube, reading a good book. Decide that phormiums are just the thing for one of the landscape projects.
08:00 Arrive at work, put coffee on, go through emails. Finally got to decision stage on a street tree planting project so write to all involved for final okay on 38 tree sites.
10:15 One of my landscape team arrives ready to plant a tree for Tree Week at a local Parents Centre - Its my favourite tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) so I'm quite excited about seeing this one go in. The tree is from a new supplier and we're really pleased with it - we'll use them again!
11:00 Hole dug and stakes going in ready for planting workshop with nursery kids. Small worry we'd hit a sewer but turned out to be hardcore - soil is quite good so tree should do well. Kids not too excited but manage not to injure one another with border spades which is good (note to self - bring smaller hand tools next time). Take a few pictures and back to the office
12:30 Lunch - something hot - I'm freezing!
13:00 Paperwork, expenses, holiday approvals and signing off invoices... got to be done. Need to keep tight eye on budgets this time of year as things are starting to get very busy.
15:00 Quick meeting with my Community and Education Team - run through planting events coming up very quickly (eek!) plus where we are with consultation for each of the different street tree and landscaping projects. Things are going pretty well so I start to panic a little bit less...
16:15 Whizz off quickly - got the plumber booked for a new kitchen tap...
20:00 Eat dinner,watch a bit of TV, doodle first stages of park entrance design... try not to think about how soon we need to plant it!
22:00 Sleep... hopefully.