Greening the Grey Streets

Aim

We aim to green the grey streets in a disadvantaged area of Sheffield, by planting street trees, benefitting people and wildlife

NESST (Nether Edge and Sharrow Sustainable Transformation) is a local community group focused on environmental issues in our area in Sheffield.  We currently have around 450 members with a programme of environmental projects, talks and walks.  In the last 3 years we have worked with local people, Sheffield City Council and Amey to plant over 130 street trees with the community raising much of the funds.  However some streets in our locality have no street trees at all, particularly in the less affluent areas.  

The Greening the Grey Streets project will benefit people and wildlife by planting trees on streets that currently have none, specifically in the Highfield and Lowfield areas, where the community has little or no money to fund street trees themselves. We want to raise the money to plant at least 7 trees, and if successful, we hope to attract further funding for many more.

Above: a few of the street trees NESST has helped to plant in our area.

Urban street trees have many benefits, such as providing shade in summer, reducing pollution and helping improve people's sense of well being. They increase biodiversity by attracting wildlife, provide green corridors and help mitigate the impacts of urban heating caused by climate change.

NESST has been working closely with Sheffield City Council and Amey to plant new street trees.   For this project, the total cost of planting a street tree is £960, which includes the tree, tree guard, digging the pit and planting, maintenance for 100 years and watering for 3 years. Our target sum would pay for the planting of 7 trees, our new stretch would pay for a potential 26.  NESST is also making a larger scale bid to the Urban Tree Challenge Fund, which could potentially provide up to 70 street trees.  For more information see our website

Above: the bark on a variety of  our new street trees

This project successfully funded on 5th September 2023