The Treemembrance Dedications page is designed for sponsors to have their say at the end of their experience. Birmingham TreePeople invite the sponsors of the memorial and commemorative trees to write the story of their special tree, who and what it is for, why that particular species, why it has been planted in that location, and what the whole experience means to you.

That’s a lot of W’s, but here at BTP we don’t believe in tagging trees with harmful or invasive plaques and instead, we want our sponsors to fill this page and their souls with words that last beyond our lifetimes, memorialising not only physically with a tree and ceremony, but through prose, capturing the essence of the Treemembrance experience to share with the wider green community.

From Ruth Tetlow, who arranged the planting of the Tree of Memory and Hope
Ruth was the first of our urban forest volunteers to submit a Tree Tale;
read her beautiful personal story here.

On Wednesday January 24th, a group of Debt Justice staff and supporters gathered in the City Centre Park in Birmingham, to commemorate the extraordinary Human Chain of about 70,000 people who gathered around the city centre 25 years earlier in 1998, as part of the global jubilee campaign. 

It resulted in the cancellation of $130 billion of unjust debt held by the governments of poor countries, and led to significant improvements in healthcare and education for their people. You may have been there. As a lasting memorial to this monumental event, we planted a ginkgo tree, thanks to the support of Birmingham TreePeople and Birmingham City Council.

The ginkgo has beautiful leaves, which are celebrated symbols of hope, strength and resilience. They turn golden yellow in autumn, and have a distinctive shape. It is native to South-East Asia, where it can live to over 1000 years old, and is considered ‘a living fossil’, as its existence has been traced back to before the Mesozoic Era. It will be a beautiful feature of the City Centre Park, and the plaque will inform and remind people of the Human Chain of 1998.

On a lovely sunny winter morning, we were delighted that the Leader of Birmingham City Council, Cllr John Cotton, came to give his support and to help plant the tree, together with Heidi Chow, Director of Debt Justice. We were very pleased to see Matt, Skye and Eva from the staff of Debt Justice, who recorded the event. Photos and further details can be seen on the Debt Justice website.

After planting the special tree, we went across to the Council House for coffee and shared further memories from John Nightingale, Rachel Stephens, Stephen Rand and others. A magnificent podcast of the event has been produced by the Birmingham journalist Adrian Goldberg. Thank you to all who made it happen.