Trees provide many benefits to the urban landscape. They lower the temperature on hot summer days, filter the air of fine particulates, regulate water flow, capture and store CO2, and provide a home for insects, birds and other animals. The Cambridge Canopy Project is one of the two Nature Smart Cities pilots that aims at increasing tree canopy cover within the urban landscape. Matthew Ling is the Project Lead at Cambridge City Council, who will be planting 2.000 new trees over the course of the Nature Smart Cities project. 

With an average canopy cover of 17%, Cambridge seems to be quite green. But trees are not equally distributed across Cambridge: the greenest areas have a canopy cover of 22.6%, while others only have a canopy cover of 12.8%. Unfortunately, the distribution of tree canopy cover coincides with socio-economic deprivation: the most deprived areas have the fewest green areas within easy walking distance. 

The disparity in access to green spaces can be referred to as ‘tree inequity’. The Cambridge Canopy Project aims to bridge this gap by planting more trees in the most deprived areas, where the benefits of trees will be most felt. 

‘This autumn and winter, we’ve got everything in place to plant 800 new trees. Our overall aim is to increase canopy cover in Cambridge by 2% during the project. We can't do that by just using publicly owned land. We need to get our citizens to plant trees in their gardens as well. To encourage this, we try to cultivate a sense of pride and caring towards our trees. Together with a local artist we made an activity booklet for children around trees. The Council have also recently committed to supporting the national Tree Charter. And during this year’s National Tree Week, we supported a pop-up gallery of fantastical trees and creatures that were hung from trees. We try to communicate about the project through as many different channels as often as possible to ensure maximum outreach and engagement across the whole of Cambridge.’ 

‘A resilient urban forest is a diverse urban forest. One in five Cambridge trees is an ash tree and these are currently under threat from disease. So we aim to add other tree species. Urban or streets trees need to be hardy and resilient; to various challenges and pressures including dog pee, drought in summer, and salt in winter. In the most deprived areas, we have also tried to include a mix of food bearing trees. These are all things we take into account when selecting trees to plant.’

Here are some recent articles they have published:

The benefits of trees in the Landscape Journal
https://issuu.com/landscape-institute/docs/12316_landscape_issue_4-2020_issuu/s/11175210

Activities in Cambridge during National Tree Week

https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/new­s/cambridge-celebrates-tree-charter-day-and-national-tree-week-9143140/