Main phases of Kids for Forest Restoration project

The work starts with creation of a small forest nursery in a school backyard. Such a nursery is capable of growing up to 1,000 seedlings annually. The nursery is divided into two parts: one is seeds section for planting seeds of trees, the other is the school forest nursery proper and here is where the seedling are grown until they are 40 to 60 cm high. The best time to plant seeds and seedlings is spring - late April when the ground is already soft enough and trees have not started growing yet. This is when we come visit a school. We tell the kids about existing environmental issues and ways to address them and make a slide show for them. After this we go to the backyard and start digging. Usually a nursery covers a 10x10 meter plot that can actually be smaller if there is not enough space in the backyard. Then we make beds for seeds. These beds should be straight and accurate so that water will not wash the seeds away. The seeds are planted in rows: not too deep for coniferous trees (1cm for pine, 0.5cm for larch) and a little deeper for broadleaf species like maple - 3 to 4 cm or oak - 5 to 8 cm. The beds are made flat and watered thoroughly from a watering pot with a sieve (so that we don't wash the layer of earth off the seeds). If the climate is usually dry, it would be good to cover the planted seeds with polyethylene film for a while. This will keep the seedbeds dump and save the seeds and beds from chicks.

Right after we go to the nursery section. Kids work in the nursery for the very first time, so to make the work more interesting we bring two-year old pine seedlings. They are 10 to 20 cm high and it is yet too early to plant them permanently and the kids will have to grow them in the nursery for a year or two (until they are 40 to 60 cm). We plant them in the nursery at about 8-15cm from one another. This is quite enough for the seedlings to grow there a couple of years. After this time they will be planted somewhere permanently. The seedling beds are quite short and it is quite easy to look after them.

Summer

Summer means the most difficult and important part of work for us. The most important thing the seeds and seedlings want is watering and weeding. In two-three weeks first seedlings emerge from the ground. As they are still to small and vulnerable we have to get rid of weeds that grow much faster than the seedlings. Already in a month the seedlings give quite big shoots that grow from the top bud - that's how much trees grow each year. Droughts are not infrequent in summer, we have to water the nursery quite regularly. The more warmth and care we give

to the seedlings at the nursery, the better they will survive in the future. Given lots of care, the seedlings will grow high and strong enough and won't require any more nursing after they are planted permanently.
As a rule, rural schools have schedules of work at the school's backyard where they usually grow vegetables. The same backyard can be used as a forest nursery so that the kids can take care of the nursery all through the summer. By late summer the two-year old pine seedlings that we planted in the spring, turn into furry three-year olds (trees grow only in summer). Some of them are big and strong enough to be planted out permanently.

Autumn

Now that the small trees stopped growing, it is time for replanting.

The seeds section of the nursery already has the first generation of one-year old pines and oaks. Depending on the growing conditions, the small pines have grown 5 to 10 cm high and if they are high enough and grow too dense, it is necessary to replant them to the nursery. We should be very careful doing this not to hurt the very small but extremely delicate roots. If the shoots are small or grow not too dense we can leave them in their place and let them grow a year longer to replant them next fall. As soon as we are through with the one-year olds, it is time to give all our attention to the three-year old seedlings. As the growth of trees depends on many different factors, the trees develop differently. After three years of growth the seedlings may be three times higher one another that is why it is necessary to sort them. The biggest of them are strong enough to be replanted permanently, the weaker ones should be left in the nursery for a year.

This fall together with the kids who were patiently looking after their school nurseries we decided to replant the first three-year olds to permanent places. For this we organized one-day field camps involving both school kids and teachers. The main goal of these camps was to teach the kids and their teachers to plant young trees to permanent places so that they can plant trees in their area themselves. The site to plant trees was chosen beforehand; basically we focused on gullies, banks and shores of water bodies and wastelands. The main idea is to use lands that nobody needs or uses as arable lands or pastures. Otherwise the young trees might be cut and destroyed.

So how the field camp worked? We meet at a school closest to the site of the camp: each school sends some 10 kids and a teacher. After everybody has arrived we can leave for the camp. To begin with, we tell the people what forests used to grow here a few centuries ago, how they were gradually destroyed by humans (for firewood, industrial needs, arable lands) and what we can do today to restore local forest cover. How forest saves rivers and brooks from drying out and pollution, how the woods protect fields from being dried out by winds and how the woods stop the growth of gullies destroying everything on their way. After a few lectures, the kids make up teams or brigades, take a basket with seedlings, spades, containers with water and spread along the edge of a gully. It is very difficult to dig the earth as after the dry summer the ground became solid as rock. Once we planted trees under pouring rain - this was the first autumn rain but the ground was so dry that the showers could not soak through deep enough. That is why under this pouring rain we had to water the newly planted trees. Most of the camps were quite sunny though. We brought two-year old pines as it was quite obvious that we did not have enough big seedlings for all camp participants. Two-year olds are rather small to be planted permanently and it will be rather tough for them to survive, but we tried to choose for them places where the grass was quite short and could not impede the growth of the trees. Most of the saplings will survive and one day turn into tall and beautiful trees. It was very good that some of the three-year old seedling came from school nurseries as they are strong enough to survive with almost no additional care. The kids worked together hard and in a while a yet hardly noticeable line of trees appeared along the gully. The lunch was ready by that time to give strength to the children after a day of hard work. Everybody ate their lunch heartily obviously feeling that together they had done a great and important job. After lunch the kids gave out small performances on forest or environmental topics that each school had prepared at home. They gave us quite a few surprises: they read verses, sang songs and even parodied Greenpeace. They told about the importance of forests, showed sketches from the life of forest inhabitants, some of the kids even brought self-made costumes. We felt very pleased to know that forests had found such a warm response from the kids.

We thanked the children and especially their teachers very warmly for their hard and selfless work at the nurseries and in the camps as they were volunteers and everything was based on the initiative of the kids and teachers. All the camp participants received gifts from Greenpeace and each school got a "Restore Our Forests" banner. We produced these banners after the spring work with schools and they depict the main stages of growing trees.

Winter

During the camps we announced a contest for the best banner on "I want a forest to grow here because?". The youngest schoolchildren received a simpler task: they will participate in the best "My Future Forest" drawing contest. Even on the New Year eve we were still receiving kids' drawings. Again the children did a great job telling through their banners and drawings why forests are so important for them and for all of us.