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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/20/our-community-deserves-beauty-grimsby-residents-unite-to-bring-tree-cover-back-aoe>
"Billy Dasein was born on Rutland Street, Grimsby, in the front room of the
house where he still lives. His father was a fitter, and his mother a housewife
who also worked in the Tickler’s jam factory. He left school at 16 and wound up
working at Courtauld’s synthetic textiles factory.
Rows of terrace houses, constructed for workers in the booming fish industry,
are set out in a grid structure by the docks. Life was similar on all these
streets: doors left unlocked, kids out playing. Everyone knew everyone.
Yet, fishing dried up in the 1970s and Dasein says people’s lives have been in
decline ever since. East Marsh – the Grimsby suburb where Rutland Street lies –
is one of the UK’s “tree deserts”, with less than 3% tree coverage. Farnham, in
“leafy” Surrey – home to some of the UK’s wealthiest neighbourhoods – has 45%.
“When I was about five I wanted trees on Rutland Street,” says Dasein. “It was
always bloody grey and bleak, there was a harshness to it.”
Low tree cover is linked with other forms of deprivation. East Marsh is the
25th most deprived ward out of the 32,844 in England, according to the Index of
Multiple Deprivation. More than two-thirds of people on the street live with at
least one form of deprivation, related to either employment, education, health
or overcrowding.
Dasein realised things had transformed on Rutland Street when he came back to
look after his dad in 2013 having left Grimsby 15 years earlier, putting
himself through university and earning a PhD. The place had “drastically
changed,” he says: people were dealing drugs in the street and everyone he knew
had “buggered off”. In the early 2000s, the council sold off the housing stock.
Absentee landlords are now “tearing the guts out of our community,” he says.
There are more than 300 empty homes in East Marsh, half of which have been
empty for at least two years, according to council data.
Dasein decided to create a community-benefit society called East Marsh United
(Emu). High on its list were the trees. “They slow traffic, are associated with
lower crime rates, increase desirability of an area, and foster community
flourishing,” he says. “Trees are just better for our streets and communities.”
Over the past two years, he has worked with local people and charities to plant
30 trees in the local park, 96 trees in local schools, and thousands of
saplings in woodland and hedgerows. “No one else is going to do it,” he says,
“so we might as well crack on.”"
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
