It’s been raining heavily in Bore, which makes life difficult for the Arsenal Forest planting team but is ideal for the seedlings themselves – they are getting the best possible start to see them through the coming dry season.
As you can see above, the track to our nursery has been impassable and under two metres of water for the last couple of weeks, but the good news is that the planting site now boasts a mixture of neem, mango and guava seedlings – making this the most bio-diverse Arsenal Forest ever.
The neem will provide the community of Bore with a very valuable timber harvest in years to come and they are brilliant for locking up atmospheric carbon in the long term, while the new additions will soon yield a nutritious crop of delicious tropical fruit to augment family diets. Disadvantaged sub-Saharan communities such as Bore are likely to be heavily affected by the economic impacts of the current situation in the Persian Gulf, so any extra food on the table will be very welcome and these fast-growing species will start to deliver fruit after as little as 18 months.
