The secret tree angel: Mystery donor gives £100,000 to fund orchards as two more firms dig deep to support tree-planting campaign
- A Daily Mail reader has donated £100,000 to the Be A Tree Angel campaign
- The contribution will more than double schools that will benefit from new trees
- The donor said he was moved to contribute after reading the Mail’s coverage
The Daily Mail’s mission to create a greener, more beautiful country took a huge leap forward yesterday when a reader donated £100,000 to the Be A Tree Angel campaign.
The generous contribution from the British businessman, who wishes to remain anonymous, will more than double the number of schools that will benefit from new trees.
The donor said he was moved to contribute after reading the Mail’s coverage and wanted to ensure the next generation would be inspired to care for nature and love trees. He also told friends he wanted to help provide a local solution to a global problem.
The Daily Mail’s mission to create a greener, more beautiful country took a huge leap forward yesterday when a reader donated £100,000 to the Be A Tree Angel campaign
The six-figure pledge comes a day after the restaurateur and philanthropist Richard Caring contributed £100,000.
The Be A Tree Angel campaign, organised with the Tree Council, urges readers to plant trees and donate money to do so. More than 35,000 trees have been planted or pledged so far, thanks to our magnificent readers who have taken part in tree-planting events across the country.
This newspaper has also given away holly, birch, willow, oak and spruce trees in their thousands to readers.
Support has come from celebrities including Joanna Lumley, Jilly Cooper and Anton du Beke, and organisations such as the National Trust, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the RSPB.
In a separate branch of the campaign, we have also sought help from businesses.
The latest two donations from businessmen – amounting to £200,000 in two days – mean that rather than funding 1,000 orchards at 1,000 schools, the Be A Tree Angel campaign can now pay for 2,000.
This will include five trees for each school, both planting and aftercare.
As well as helping to foster a greener, more pleasant environment, it will allow children to learn about growing fruit and healthy eating. It will also teach them how trees can help combat global warming caused by greenhouse gases and air pollution.
Further contributions rolled in to the campaign yesterday from the garden centre chain Dobbies, which donated £10,000, and the Lloyds Banking Group, which also gave a substantial sum.
Sara Lom, of the Tree Council, said yesterday: ‘We are humbled by the generosity of the anonymous Tree Angel who has pledged £100,000 to help us plant a further 1,000 orchards in 1,000 schools.
‘This is double our original target. The resulting orchards will help tackle climate change, improve air quality and provide healthy fruit for students and wildlife to enjoy.
‘From generous donations such as this one, to planting a single tree in your garden, everyone can play their part in helping create a tree-filled future.’
She added: ‘We’re delighted to hear Dobbies and Lloyds have made a generous commitment to the Tree Angel campaign and would like to thank them, as well as all our other Tree Angels, for their wonderful support.’
Dobbies chief executive Graeme Jenkins said: ‘We are proud to support the campaign in engaging young people and educating them on the issues of climate change and to help play a part in making such a positive impact on the environment.’
David Elliott, of Trees for Cities, which helps plant trees at schools, said: ‘We would like to thank the anonymous donor for supporting this fantastic appeal. By planting trees, we celebrate something we all love and cherish.’
The conservation volunteering charity TCV said: ‘This generous donation will make a significant difference, inspiring the next generation of volunteers.’
This is what the future looks like
Assisi Jackson, Campaigner and Granddaughter of Mick and Bianca Jagger
Standing on the edge of a windswept Cornish field, surrounded by primary schoolchildren all carefully packing soil around the 400 saplings we were planting, I felt an overwhelming sense of positivity and pride.
This, I thought, is what the future looks like: children proactively doing something to protect and nurture the planet they’re inheriting. And gosh, how enthusiastically they were going about it.
Many of the children who came along earlier this month, bringing their parents and grandparents with them, are classmates of my daughter, Ezra, who’s five and goes to Boscastle Community Primary School, a village school with some 70 pupils.
As well as her daddy, Alex, and me, Ezra was planting alongside her paternal grandparents, Steph and Chris, and her great-grandmother, the human rights and environmental campaigner Bianca Jagger, who has been a source of great inspiration for me growing up.
Talk about a cross-generational call to arms. There were at least 40 of us, all mucking in and having a great time in the process. Together we planted birch trees, holly, hazel, blackthorn and oak, all donated by the Woodland Trust.
Bianca Jagger and her granddaughter Assisi Jackson planting trees in fields near the Cornish town of Boscastle
Bianca Jagger and her granddaughter Assisi Jackson were planting trees in fields near the Cornish town of Boscastle. Some of the local families and children involved in the tree planting
How wonderful, then, that thanks to the Daily Mail’s Be A Tree Angel campaign – which this week received an incredible boost in the form of a £100,000 donation by the philanthropist Richard Caring and now a further £100,000 from another future-thinking anonymous donor – planting sessions like ours can now take place at schools up and down the land.
The children who’ll get involved, joining the band of Tree Angels, will gain a sense of having invested in their own futures and that of our planet. There’s been lots of talk at my daughter’s school about the environment recently, but not in the doom-laden terms that seem to paralyse so many adults with a sense of hopelessness about the future.
Instead, the focus has been on the kind of positive actions that will make things better – avoiding waste, reducing carbon emissions and taking action, such as planting trees in order to help our beautiful planet keep on producing the oxygen we need.
The Daily Mail’s Tree Angel campaign helps show children there is something practical they can do to help. It makes them feel empowered and see things like recycling, cutting back on single-use plastic and reducing unnecessary car journeys as the minimum they should be doing as we look for ways to preserve and protect the environment.
Planting a tree really is only the beginning.
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