Local School Children Plant First Mulberry Trees at Mulberry Park

Children from St Martin?s Garden and Combe Down Primary Schools helped Curo, the housing and support organisation, plant the first new trees to create a woodland walk at the former Foxhill MOD site Mulberry Park.

Curo is creating a woodland walk along the northern edge of Mulberry Park, planted with a mixture of pine and native trees, which includes fruiting trees like the mulberry. The woodland walk is to link Foxhill and Pope’s Walk, bordering Perrymead and its mature woodland.

Mulberry Park will include 700 new homes, community facilities and open spaces on the former Foxhill MOD site.  Curo secured unanimous support for its outline planning application for the scheme from Bath & North East Somerset Council in February 2015.  Alongside the woodland walk, Curo also plans to create the first new formal park in Bath for almost 100 years.

Children from the two local primary schools got mucky planting the first new trees on site – including the first mulberry trees.  After some hard work, digging the holes and positioning the trees, they hung the trees with ribbon streamers and wooden stars, decorated with their names and designs of the wildlife that they would like to see at Mulberry Park.  Finley and Jacob from Combe Down Primary School’s gardening club even drew pictures of the pandas that they hope to see!

The children learned about the different trees that they planted during the day, including English oaks, silver birch and beech trees.  The mulberry trees will form part of an edible landscape and more trees, including fruiting trees, will be planted as the site is developed over the next few years.

Back inside, the children made bird feeders to take home and attract some feathered visitors to their own window sill or garden.  Mitchell, from St Martin’s Garden Primary School said “I can’t wait to get home and hang it from the tree in my garden”.

The children were joined by Curo's CEO Victor da Cunha, MD of Curo’s house-building division Gerraint Oakley and Cherry Beath, Mayor of Bath and ward councillor. They also had expert help to plant the trees from rboriculturalists, Glendale and the landscape architects, HTA Design

Victor da Cunha said, “it’s great to see the site brought to life by local children and to get them involved in creating the woodland walk.  We are all excited to see these trees mature as Mulberry Park takes shape and hope that the children will be able to see them flourish and grow in the years to come.”

The Mulberry Park name was chosen from suggestions made by locals to reflect the site’s beautiful natural surroundings as well as the city’s long military history, including the Admiralty’s work on the design of the Mulberry Harbours used in the Normandy Landings.