Indigenous trees along roads in Nairobi for people & nature

Cathy Watson is organizing this fundraiser.

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Hi, my name is Cathy Watson. With the permission of Kenya Urban Roads Authority, we have been greening the bare road reserves of a city highway for the last five years, bringing back nature, reducing erosion, cooling the tarmac, and creating jobs for the local community, including Masai night watchmen and the women who run roadside nurseries. The results have been nothing short of staggering. From a muddy desolate stretch of highway, we now have avenues of trees and mini-forests consisting of over 70 species of Kenyan trees, some of which are threatened. We also grassed the reserves (see a 2020 shot of the team preparing to plant).

Today pedestrians sit under the trees on the grass, operating small businesses like selling tea from a thermos, and recently basket sellers moved in, loving the shade and the branches from which to hang their wares. The area has come alive with benefits for everyone. A week ago, however, we went a step further and started

removing the noxious invasive bush Camara lantana, and have thereby gained another two hectares of land. It was then that I realised that we need your help. Previously self funded and paid for by friends and well wishers, we would like to ask you to contribute towards buying 1000 seedlings for this newly cleared land so we can bring it back into productivity. Our intention is to further build tree diversity, by planting at least another 20 Kenyan tree species that we do not yet have (we are a young arboretum and already a seed source). To be purchased from a community-based organisation with a nursery, this will not only help us but also be a windfall for them. We further seek funds to employ these university graduates to conduct an inventory of all the trees we have planted since we started five years ago, geotag them, and get them online. (See leader of these youth examining a leaf as he identifies a tree.) Knowing exactly what we have will enable us to upload our data and officialise what we have done on websites like Restor and with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Finally, the donation will pay for the planting, manuring, mulching, protecting, staking and other care of the trees and grass around them. Tree maintenance is always the biggest cost. We normally spend $30 a week on labour but with the removal of Lantana it soared to $160 a week. We don't mind: this is job creation. But we are beginning to need your help. Help us be a model for roadsides in Kenya and beyond. (We currently get about a visitor a week from universities, other cities, civil society groups and others entities wanting to know how we have done what we have done.) All roadsides can be refugia. We can go way beyond the lacklustre species, most of them exotic like Jacaranda, and some of them invasive, like Senna spectabilis, that are often planted along roads in East Africa. No roadside needs to be a hostile environment for people. Instead, it can provide shade, shelter, respite, safety (because there are others around), and even a job. No money will come to me. It will all go to labor and materials. This is ecological restoration. It is also tree equity, social justice and building biodiversity. It is a learning hub! Thanks! And any excess funds raised will be used to green other roads in Nairobi.