'Planting Trees, Growing Together'

CELT were delighted to host a community tree planting event and invite our community to participate with us in celebrating this year's National Tree Week theme -

  'Planting Trees, Growing Together' on March 16th 2026

National Tree Week is Ireland’s largest annual tree celebration and is proudly organised by the Tree Council of Ireland. This special week invites communities across the nation to come together to appreciate the beauty and crucial importance of Ireland’s trees to all our lives.

CELT were delighted to join in this celebration with a community tree planting day at the Slieve Aughty Centre as part of our new collaborative nature restoration and afforestation education project that CELT are working on in a strategic education partnership with CCF Forester Julius Silvan, as Project Manager and the Slieve Aughty Centre.

Our collaborative aims are to build on the ecological and biodiversity surveys and unique charasterics of the area, and build on the potential of this site to offer a new educational and biodiversity demonstration space and initiate an exciting nature restoration project in the area. 

Over the coming years our aim is to build on our work with professional foresters and other specialist water and land management experts, such as Feidhlim Harty and Hedgerows Ireland, Drystone Walls Ireland, and others in the restoration of the critical wetlands, biodiversity, hedgerows, and native forestry at the Slieve Aughty Centre, and to create an exemplar model and center of excellence for nature restoration and bioregional education positioning CELT’s educational programme and the Slieve Aughty Centre, as a key regional outdoor nature education facility and demonstration project for agroforestry, afforestation, ponds and native hedgerow management, nature and biodiversity conservation”

We aim to expand on this educational potential and build on and enhance the existing CELT educational program, which includes biodiveristy, agroforestry and sustainable forest, water and hedgerow management, wild food foraging workshops, woodland crafts, and school tours. This Strategic partnership will offer exciting new opportunities to extend its programme to local schools and community groups, expanding CELT’s local and national educational outreach while vitally protecting and restoring nature at the local level.

Community Tree Planting Event Details included planting, preparing the land and caring for young trees followed by a delicious feast for lunch kindly provided by the Slieve Aughty Centre. We are also grateful to the Galway County Council's Environmental Officer, Mark Molloy, and Biodiversity Officer, Rosina Joyce, who ensured we had an excellent stock of native trees to plant, which we collected from their Tree Week Offerings to local Communities

The Slieve Aughty Nature Restoration and Afforestation project, is managed by Julius Silvan, on behalf of CELT in a wonderful strategic partnership with the Slieve Aughty Centre, and was made possible with the kind support and funding from the Community Foundation Ireland, Biodiversity Survey Funding and Implemention Funding, which aims to build on existing ecological and biodiversity surveys of the area, to initiate an exciting new educational and nature restoration project for the region.

We aim to continue working with professional foresters, land, water, pond and hedgerow specialists, and other experts to assist in the development of our educaional programme and through the restoration of critical wetlands, biodiversity, hedgerows, and agroforestry at the Slieve Aughty Centre, to create an exemplar model and center of excellence for nature restoration and bioregional education learning centres for Ireland. 

This event is made possible thanks to the support and funding from the Community Foundation Ireland, and the Irish Environmental Network, by the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications and to Galway County Council.

To read more about our progress and follow the life of our project; please see an article from Tree Week 2025 by Emily Ross at the Clare Echo

More information on National Tree Week please visit https://www.nationaltreeweek.ie/

Fun Fact on the National Tree Website - "A Chairde Gaeil”

- Trees are part of our very identity. We are all familiar with being addressed at public events as “A Chairde Gaeil” but did you know that the Irish word for an Irish person – Gael - comes from the Welsh language Goídil. It means a person who lives in a wood! 

So long ago, the Welsh people looking the 60 miles across the Irish Sea at a heavily wooded Ireland realised that we must all live in the woods. It was they who first referred to us as “A Chairde Gaeil”. Our connection with trees is as old as the Irish language itself, which is around 2,500 years old!

https://www.treecouncil.ie/national-tree-week

CELT is committed to actively supporting the implementation and delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), seen as complementary to Ireland’s Well-being Framework, and we work on increasing awareness across all our educational and promotional resources, including in our current project plans; specifically acting on a number of goals such as delivering on Goal 3 Good Health & Wellbeing, Goal 4 - Quality Education,  Goal 15 - Life on Land, Goal 13 - Climate Action, Goal 9 - Innovation and infrastructure, Goal 17 - Partnerships for the Goals,  https://sdgs.un.org/goals