Businesses joined Bruntwood in a mass tree planting session on green space off Princess Parkway, Manchester as part of the City of Trees movement on Thursday 21 April.

Bruntwood, the family-owned and run property company which provides office space and retail spaces, has teamed up with City of Trees to plant a tree for each of their key partners in Manchester including Manchester International Festival, HOME, Laing O’Rourke, HSBC and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Over 250 trees were planted in total including oak, field maple, elder, silver birch, rowan and hazel.

Back in December, Bruntwood made a commitment to plant a tree for each of their key partners as a Christmas gift. The planting supported the City of Trees movement, which aims to plant a tree for every man, woman and child in Greater Manchester over the next two decades.

Trees have a hugely positive impact on the environment; removing harmful pollutants from the air, providing a buffer to noise, mitigating flooding as well as helping to green our grey cities.

Led by Red Rose Forest and The Oglesby Charitable Trust, City of Trees is a partnership made up of businesses, community groups and organisations, all united to make the City of Trees’ ambition a reality.

Kevin Wigley from the City of Trees team comments “We are thrilled by the support from Bruntwood and their partners towards the goal of planting three million trees.

We hope the actions of Bruntwood will inspire other businesses, organisations and the people of Greater Manchester to contribute to the City of Trees vision of planting a tree for every man, woman and child across the region.”

Kate Vokes from Bruntwood said: “We’re really proud to be supporting the City of Trees movement, it’s a fantastic opportunity for us to help create a sustainable city for future generations, something that we’re really passionate about as a company”. 

Stephen Kinsey, a solicitor from Manchester-based law firm Addleshaw Goddard LLP came down with five colleagues and commented; “It’s great to have an opportunity to get back in touch with the earth. The community spirit was fantastic." 

Gemma Gore, Director at We are Family, Part of We are Indigo, along with Matthew Krysko, and Harvey Krysko, 11 months added; “It’s so important to plant these trees for the future generations of Manchester – which is why we brought our son down. We plan to bring Harvey back to show him the tree we planted together."

Earth Day takes place on Friday 22 April and was first launched in 1970 aiming to inspire people to take positive action for the environment.

This year’s theme is ‘Trees for the Earth’, and is encouraging people to plant billions of trees across the world to help combat those lost to deforestation, development and bad management.

For more information on the City of Trees movement, please contact Sarah McNally in the Red Rose Forest press office on: 0161 872 1660 or email: sarah@redroseforest.co.uk