Royal Alexandra Hospital planted 300 trees for the ‘Royal Alexandra Hospital Forest for the Future’ on 26th April 2025. This was done by 70 volunteers over 3 hours one drizzly Saturday afternoon. They included staff members, both current and retired and their families with age range from 1-70+!
“We were delighted and extremely grateful to receive the free trees from the NHS Forest charity. There was a lovely atmosphere on the day and lots of new friendships and connections were made amongst colleagues who would not normally work together during their day-to-day jobs. We had home baking and flasks of tea and coffee to help fuel the planters.”
Immediately after the planting they had a prolonged heatwave with no rain (very uncommon in the west of Scotland), which meant that they had to swiftly coordinate a watering rota. Initially this was felt to be a negative thing, it actually provided the positive side effect of more concrete ownership and a greater connection with the trees with many more conversations had over watering cans during watering sessions. It also brought many other staff members out into the planted outside areas that were previously felt to be ‘out of bounds’. They would come out to chat about the trees and ask about the project. Patients were also interested in watching the outside activities and many conversations were had with them during both the planting and the watering through open windows.
They planted the majority of the trees along either side of the main glass corridor of the hospital which was the original plan of the architect of the hospital who had envisaged a ‘green walkway’.
Their next project is to plant 14,600 spring bulbs in the grounds this autumn. This is so that they can bloom in the spring of 2026 which will be the 40th birthday of the hospital, one bulb for each day their hospital has been in service.