Trees of the month – Santry Sports Grounds

Posted on: 18 October 2023

The area’s tree count is set to grow this month as dozens of staff and student volunteers plant 200 native and naturalised trees to showcase the importance of climate and biodiversity action. This year we are planting a mix of Birch, Cherry, Beech, Hazel, Alder and Oak.  The trees we plant have the potential to store over 865 tonnes of carbon once fully matured. That amount of carbon is equivalent to the emissions produced by 5,000,000 miles of driving in a diesel car. 

This event is in its second year running and made possible by Members of Trinity’s Estates and Facilities team who lay the groundwork for the site, ordering trees and preparing the ground for planting.

Trinity’s Santry campus was acquired in 1960 to develop as a sports ground and to build a book repository.  The book repository holds over three million books - items from the rapidly expanding collections are rotated from open shelves to storage and back to open shelves as per request. Santry is also home to three 3G (third generation turf) pitches, an Olympic-standard water-based hockey pitch, a sand-based GAA pitch, two soccer pitches, a rugby pitch and several training areas. 

Trees ready to be planted

Over 30% of the 14-hectare site is covered in woodland and shrubbery with 1.3 hectares of wild meadows. There are many massive mature specimen trees such as Oak and Horse Chestnuts in the woods dating back to the original Demesne that store significant amounts of carbon.  The Estates and Facilities team are in the process of calculating the carbon sequestered and stored to get a more accurate figure for the area.  The trees and shrubs also remove significant amounts of other damaging greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone and sulphur dioxide.

Trinity’s campus in Santry has been subject to an area tree preservation order since 1987 and has quite an interesting history.  To read more, see information from Fingal County Council and Headstuff.   We also invite you to get involved in Climate and Biodiversity Action Week and other sustainability initiatives throughout the year – we invite you to find more information on the Sustainability website.

• Tags:
• Environment
• Sustainability