Plant Your Tree
Plant Your Future

The “Plant Your Tree- Plant your Future” tree planting campaign was officially started on 23trd of august 2009 at the Rotary Club of Naivasha Golf Trophy Tournament. During the event 30 trees were planted at the Naivasha Sports Club. Another 50 trees were sold to people who are going to plant the trees in their own place.

Our original aim as a single Rotary club was to plant 50,000 trees per annum, and we will urge all clubs to follow our example and plant 50,000 trees per annum.
If all the Rotary Clubs in District 9200 planted the above we would have somewhere in the region of 7 (SEVEN) million trees planted per annum, at 4m spacing this would be the equivalent of 11,200 hectares per year. It would take at least 10 years just to replant an area like the Mau, let alone all the other areas in District 9200 - so there is a huge challenge ahead of us.
Richard McGonnell,
(President of The Rotary Club of Naivasha, 2009-2010 and initiator of the project)

The initiative turned out to be very ambitious. And soon it was established that it was not possible to achieve the original goal of 50,000 trees per annum. This setback however did not stop the rotarians to continue with the project.

So far the "Plant Your Tree-Plant Your Future" project has resulted in planting an impressive number of 33,200 trees.

To organize a campaign like this is not an easy task and demands a lot of planning. It is not simply a matter of putting the seedling into the ground. First of all you have to make sure that the right tree is planted at the right location with the right environmental conditions. For example some species are more drought resistant than others. To purchase the seedlings and transport to the selected sites is another challenge.

But even after planting the tree the job is not finished. To increase the survival rate the trees need to be looked after. In situations where the rains are letting us down the trees need to be watered. Young trees also need physical protection because they can be very tasty to some herbivores. This is one of the reasons why it is great to team up with schools. By giving individual children the responsibility to take care of “their own tree” the survival rates of the seedlings are high. It is a challenge to protect and nurture your own tree. This method is also great for creating awareness amongst the young generation.

During the early stages of planning we thought the free tree seedlings are widely available. Although we do get some seedlings for free they are not enough for a successful campaign. In support of the project a couple of flower farms around Naivasha offered to grow tree seeds into seedlings. At the farms the seed can grow into a seedling under controlled conditions so the germination rate and survival rate are much higher compared to planting the seed at other sites. Since the success rate of a seedling growing into a tree is a lot higher compared to planting just a seed we use seedlings for our campaign.

It turns out that the most costly factor in our campaign is transport. Our first and currently main target group are schools around Naivasha and Kingangkop. The schools in Kingankop are up in the hills towards the Aberdares National Park and it can be a costly event to get the seedlings up there.

In several cases individuals and companies offered assistance for free like seedlings, growing seeds and transport. But of course we can not rely on their kindness all the time. To cover the costs of the campaign we are selling trees at social events at a price of 100 Kenyan Shillings per tree. For this money we will make sure that the tree will be transported, planted and cared for. And we are always looking for individuals, organizations an companies who do like our initiative and who are willing to support our effort to plant as many trees as possible.

If you would like to receive information or if you would like to support our initiative please contact us by clicking on the logo below.

I HAVE PLANTED MY TREE - DID YOU PLANT YOURS?