Plant for the Planet event at Andover Golf Club

With a motto of ‘stop talking, start planting’ in mind, children from six Andover schools joined forces to take part in the global Plant For The Planet scheme, which aims to raise awareness about the issues of climate change and global justice whilst taking real action by planting trees.

Andover Golf Club hosted the tree planting event for the third year in a row.

Allan King, captain of the golf club said: “We are always looking to help out with anything to do with the community.”

“It’s quite an open course but these sort of areas are great for planting a few trees aren’t they?”

Community group Andover Trees United also helped guide the children with their tree planting efforts.

Trustee Wendy Davis thinks the scheme is an important way to teach children about the injustice of the way we live on our world.

She said: “We in Europe and America are the great carbon producers and we are the great wealth owners, and yet it’s the southern hemisphere that suffers from the climate crisis most of all.

“They don’t have the wealth and resistance to rebuild and rehome themselves and they make very little carbon dioxide, so in fact there is this imbalance in the world. It’s about the children saying ‘enough is enough.

Grace Davis and Izzy Taylor, both 12-years-old and students at Harrow Way School were participating in the tree planting event as ambassadors.

Grace said: “I think it’s important that we teach people about the environment because if we don’t tell them about it, they are not going to know how important it is and they are not going to know that we need to do something about it.”

According to Izzy, being ambassadors has given the pair opportunities to pass on the eco message.

She urges adults to support children with events like this saying: “As we’re children, we can’t do everything so having an adult on board to help talk to people and get people involved would be great.

“Let the kids do it, just help them.”