It’s time to celebrate our street trees!

Trees are a vital part of Sussex, enhancing the landscape and our sense of health and wellbeing. 

In our cities and towns, trees are essential infrastructure, delivering clean air, offering shade and shelter, and helping keep our streets cool as our climate warms. They offer us life and vitality in the form of living things amidst the grey of roads, buildings and man-made structures.  

Yet, despite being incredibly important, urban trees are often overlooked. They often have less space to grow and must cope with heat and pollution.  Not all tree species can survive these pressures. 

That is why it is so important we carefully select our street-tree species and give all the protection and support we can to existing specimens. 

Plant Your Postcode 

At just over 10% Brighton’s canopy cover is well under the national average. When you combine this with the loss of trees to disease, we are facing a bleak tree future. But there is hope on the horizon.  

Last year Brighton & Hove City Council vaccinated 1,500 elms to great success. This year CPRE Sussex is supporting them to vaccinate even more. 

Our Plant Your Postcode is also supporting residents who want to see trees planted in their streets. This month will see four new street trees planted in Compton Road, Bavant Road and Florence Road, Brighton.  

We are also waiting to hear the results of the allocations of the Better Brighton fund. At least £22,000 has been allocated to each ward. Working with resident groups, we are appealing to councillors to use this money to support Plant Your Postcode projects. 

This year we are also launching a new project to “green up” South Portslade. We want to plant at least six trees along the southern part of Boundary Road. 

Find out more about Plant Your Postcode here. 

Tree Festival 2026 

We are also excited to confirm that the programme for this year’s Tree Festival will soon be going live. With the festival now in its third year, we are thrilled to be offering a variety of events across Sussex over the following dates: 

• Sunday, May 24 

• Friday, May 29, to Sunday, May 31 

• Saturday, June 6, to Sunday, June 7 

Keep an eye on the website for a full programme soon. 

Learn more about trees 

If you are feeling inspired to learn more about trees, why not take a stroll and explore the trees on your doorstep? We may only be partway through March, but we are already beginning to see signs of spring.  

One of the earliest is the appearance of catkins, which appear on our native hazel trees from as early as January. Catkins are also now appearing on willow and silver birch trees, making March a great time to go catkin spotting. 

You may also notice some trees are already starting to blossom. Blackthorn, cherry plum and wild cherry are often the first to bloom, adding their frothy pink and white blossoms to hedgerows, streets and parks.  

Looking to inspire younger tree lovers? We have a series of factsheets and activity sheets for children aged 5 to 16. All the resources are free to download and share here.  

Read more about our work to protect, celebrate and promote trees in our latest column for The Argus here.