St Anthony's Catholic Primary takes part in The Queen's Green Canopy with Lancashire's Deputy Lieutenant visiting to plant the tree

St Anthony's Catholic Primary in Fulwood, Preston is taking part in The Queen's Green Canopy, and were visited by a Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire this week for their official planting ceremony.

The Queen’s Green Canopy (QGC) is a tree planting initiative created to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022 which invites people from across the UK, including individuals, schools or entire cities, to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee”, which will benefit future generations and create a legacy in honour of The Queen’s leadership.

Taking part in the initiative as a school, the students at St Anthony's were visited by Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire Anthony Attard OBE on Tuesday morning who helped plant the school's tree on the corner of their field shared with St Anthony of Padua R C Church.

Anthony, who is also the Chairman of Marketing Lancashire, then held an assembly for the 200 plus pupils, in which he spoke about the significance of The Green Canopy, the Queen and the Jubilee celebrations.

Explaining why the school wanted to get involved in the QGC, Deputy Headteacher Vicky Berry said: "It's such a huge celebratory year for the Queen, and obviously being environmentally conscious is a massive thing at the moment so we wanted to raise awareness of the importance of the environment and planting trees whilst also celebrating the Queen, plus its an Oak tree so it's going to last for up to a 1000 years meaning it's part of the legacy of our school."

Vicky added: "The children were really interested in the Queen, they loved the history side of the royal family, and Anthony also mentioned how the Queen wanted everybody to have a celebratory lunch on the fourth of June, so we talked about having a school party before we break up for the Summer half term. We're also going to be doing lots of research and history work throughout the year to build up to the day as well."

Schools can get involved with The Queen's Green Canopy through the Woodland Trust’s Free Trees for Schools and Communities Scheme, which across 2021 and 2022 have over three million saplings in tree packs, available on a first come first served basis.

The Queen’s Green Canopy will also dedicate a network of 70 Ancient Woodlands across the UK and identify 70 Ancient Trees to celebrate Her Majesty’s 70 years of service.

The official tree planting season is between October-March, with the season picking up again in October 2022 after the Spring/Summer recess.

Every individual or group who plants a jubilee tree is also invited to take a picture of it and upload it on to the QGC map, which can be found here.