Calling for submissions!
We all have a Tree Tale. Visiting the local park with Mom, and meeting friends to climb the weirdest tree together. Playing football on the playing fields with Dad, picking flowers to make daisy chains. Maybe even barbecuing in a community green-space with all the family… The list is endless, and we want to add yours.
We’re calling for submissions for Tree Tales! They will be archived on our website, a compilation of individual or group stories about nature and green spaces for a collective anthology. We want to know how you have been touched by nature. Why is it important to you? What’s your favourite memory with trees?
Memories of Nature
There are over 600 green-spaces in our city, with 1.1 million people from hundreds of different nationalities. We want to learn about your unique experiences that make life special, without realising, because nature is always there. We can come together through our shared experience of our surroundings, creating diverse and community-driven encounters that will bring people together.
Birmingham TreePeople have spent 2023 working with many different partners and organisations, for various projects, all in the name of raising awareness of tree benefits and getting more trees in the ground. Underneath the overarching canopy of tree-related events, boiling down to the individual, we all have a relationship with nature. We want to hear your Tree Tale and how you connected with nature.
We wrote many new tales this year to add to our collection, but we want to know what YOUR favourite recollection of nature is, because our urban parks and green-spaces are pockets of well-being just waiting to be dipped into. Tell us your nature memory, send us your favourite images, and highlight what you hope to see more of in the future, so we can capture the essence of how residents truly feel about their environment.
You can submit your Tree Tale in any way you like; you can write a poem, a short story, a single sentence. Feel free to include more than one photo if it helps you tell your story, or you could even submit a video for those who aren’t camera-shy.
So… Tell us your Tree Tales!
Here is an example of a written submission:
Weeping Willow
When I was growing up, being an only child, I spent many magical hours tracing every corner of the garden. I’d collect unusual rocks, colourful insects, leaves, small fistfuls of soil, anything that caught my youthful eye, and use the large stone pot outside to make ‘a witch’s potion’ (hopefully not with the insects, but I know I ate seven ladybirds at one point, as I was clearly an overly curious child who learned with their mouth).
My dad is an arborist, so I’ve always had a close connection with green spaces. I grew up in a quaint bungalow adjacent to a large playing field, where halfway up, on the left-hand side, there was and still is a beautiful, nodding willow tree on the edge of the embankment. I’ve climbed and fallen out of that tree enough times over the years to lose count, and I remember swinging my stubby legs over the broken bottom branch to get into the tree (awkwardly, hence the falling), singing from the top branch, sharing secrets with my friends over drinks.
This drooping, weeping willow tree has, and always will be, a special memory, and a part of my story, my growing up and experiencing the world (no trees were tasted during this time). It reminds me of my family, my old friends, and show me that when life changes, the willow still stands there with my memories inside.
Charlotte (Charley) McDermott, BTP Communications Officer