Celebrating a long history with our patron

This week, at our office in Oxford we sorted though our post to find an envelope from Buckingham palace. We were delighted that inside was a letter with the wonderful news that His Majesty The King will remain patron of the International Tree Foundation.

The announcement comes  following a thorough review of over 1,000 organisations to mark the first anniversary of Their Majesties’ Coronation.

International Tree Foundation has enjoyed a long history of patronage by the former HRH The Prince of Wales, who first joined us as patron in March 1978!

The below photo is from a tree planting in Edinburgh in 1997 with the Kenya High Commissioner.

In 2020, International Tree Foundation received a grant from the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund which enabled seventeen new community projects across Commonwealth nations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Writing in our Trees Journal ahead of ITF's centenary in 2022, the then Prince of Wales said of this work, “Each and every project is an example of a community that has come to recognise, as we all must, that Nature is indeed the true engine of our local economy, our health, and of all our livelihoods.”

In his foreword for the Journal, HRH also noted, “It is the unsung heroes and heroines around the world who inspire me most, such as those who plant trees in the wind and rain on Dartmoor year after year; the community restoring Kenya’s Imenti forest; and the people teaching small-holder farmers how to embrace agroforestry to improve their farms’ productivity and build soil health. There are countless local examples of the changes we all need to make so that we can each, in our own way, become Nature’s stewards.”

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