St Margaret's Wangari Maathai Peace Grove

Wangari Maathai Peace Groves pop up all over Manchester!

In the second of our Peace Grove projects we worked with St Margaret's Primary Eco Club and had a range of adult activists join us including an environmentalist from Friends of the Earth, a renewable energy expert, a politician, an arts activist and community gardener, bee keepers, community activists... an amazing bunch of inspiring folk for the children to meet. The sessions were held at The Forever Garden, a community garden in Whalley Range.

At the first session people shared their activist stories, learned about Wangari Maathai and then, focusing on what they wanted to do to help towards a positive future, they wrote down their inspirations. 

The following week people came together again to plant the Peace Grove: we all thought about the meaning of peace, learned about the extraordinary heritage fruit trees that were going to be planted and then, after lots of work digging, put our aspirations in the hole and planted the trees on top. The idea was for our aspirations to grow with the trees.

Walking back to school talking to the children they were clearly inspired by Wangari's values, and loved the idea of  'simply doing the best that I can.' And although they are busy helping to make their school more sustainable it was clear they would revisit the grove to look after the trees and be in the peace and quiet to find their inspiration. 

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