Schools across Greater Sydney are planting tens of thousands of trees and plants to create cooler and greener spaces.
The project is part of the Cooling the Schools program, a partnership between the NSW Department of Education and Greening Australia.
A key focus of the program is cooling primary and secondary schools that have temperatures soaring to over 40C degrees in summer.
Senior Program Officer of Greening Australia Nicola Masters said Greening Australia approached DPIE in 2020 to address this problem.
“(The program) is a strategic development of school grounds to help tackle urban heat… (and it) is giving the students the opportunity to engage with their environment,” she told Hope 103.2.
How program works
Schools participating in the program receive curriculum materials, developed by Greening Australia and National Parks and Wildlife Service, along with approximately 150 trees and plants.
The curriculum take students through a process of examining their own schools, taking measurements and picking out locations to plant trees.
Greening Australia then goes out to the school to come up with an individual plan for the school, which needs to be agreed on by the NSW Department of Education.
“When that’s been agreed, we go out to the school with all the plants, all the tools, with our educators,” Ms Masters said.
“Usually, the students come out in a class by class basis, like 30 at a time, and we show them how to plant the plants.
“We teach them about health and safety and then they literally just go for it; we dig the hole for them in advance, so the plants are going in the right place.”
So far, schools from Hornsby, Sutherland Shire, Blue Mountains and Bondi are taking part.
“By having an active program where students… actively plant the plant…they can feel some agency and feel able to do something tangible in their local environment,” – Nicola Masters, Senior Program Officer of Greening Australia
Source: Supplied
Involving students
The process of involving students in the act of planting trees is important, Ms Masters said.
“The major importance is giving the students the opportunity to engage with their environment so they feel like they have some ownership (and) they feel like they’ve got some agency,” she said.
“There’s a lot of anxiety around these scary words like climate change, phrases that they’re hearing in the media.
“By having an active program where students can actually get their hands dirty, actively plant the plant and look after the plants and watch them grow, they can feel some agency and feel able to do something tangible in their local environment.”
“There’s a lot of anxiety around these scary words like climate change, phrases that they’re hearing in the media,” – Nicola Masters
The students are responding positively to the program, Ms Masters said.
“We’ve had kids say ‘oh, I thought this was going to be boring, but actually, it was so much fun.’ I’ve had kids say, ‘I want to be a tree planter when I grow up’,” she said.
“We’ve had a lot of students who have, you know, been a bit disengaged in the classroom who have been very actively engaged in the field.”
The trees are tubestock plants, which are advanced growth plants that are small.
“Usually the students will see, in the lifetime that they’re at the school, a significant difference,” Ms Master said.
“The small ones actually grow much faster than big trees; they grow very actively and you can see that happening.”
“Usually the students will see, in the lifetime that they’re at the school, a significant difference,” – Nicola Masters
How trees help with urban heat
Although trees provide shade on a hot day, there is so much more that they offer, according to Ms Masters.
“Urban areas are a lot warmer than rural areas… and that is because heat is held by artificial surfaces and people create heat with energy from their cars and buildings and the activities they do.”
Natural surfaces, such as leaves and grass, have a process called photosynthesis where they create energy to grow by, she said.
“As they’re photosynthesising, they actually evaporate water as well, so that has a cooling effect called evaporative cooling.”
Other benefits to tree planting include biodiversity effects that benefit both flora and fauna and the ability of trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“Capturing carbon is a direct method of reducing carbon from the atmosphere, which is one of the key drivers of climate change,” Ms Masters said.
The program currently has over 50 schools participating, with the aim of getting to 180 schools and planting more than 36,000 trees by the end of the year.
Greening Australia would like the funding to be renewed at the completion of the program and see it continue beyond the 180 schools.
It is also looking to extend the program to other capital cities and currently has a pilot going in Brisbane and Adelaide.
The program currently has over 50 schools participating, with the aim of getting to 180 schools and planting more than 36,000 trees by the end of the year.