It’s Earth Day, which means it’s time for our annual update on the tiny forest that postcrossers help grow in central Portugal!
As some of you may remember from previous years, this is an unusual kind of meetup because it has no postcards at all! Instead, we join Quercus (a Portuguese environmental organization that works on reforestation and conservation projects) and spend a morning planting trees in the Pinhal de Leiria, the historic pine forest that was devastated by the 2017 wildfires and has been slowly regaining life ever since.
This year’s planting day happened on March 14 and, as seems to be becoming tradition in recent years, it was another rainy morning. Luckily, we weren’t alone: a group from a pharmaceutical association was also planting nearby, which made the work feel lighter!
In the end, fueled by some delicious viriatos (a typical sweet from Viseu), our group of 13 postcrossers managed to plant hundreds of young pines. This year we had an enthusiastic 2.5 year old among us, and seeing kids involved in these events always gives us hope for the future. We like to imagine that one day they’ll come back for a picnic in the shade of these trees.
Earlier this year, storm Kristin hit the area and left a trail of destruction in neighboring towns, including a lot of broken trees in the forest. It was sad to see, but also a relief to notice that the trees we planted in previous years are still small enough that they survived the storm well and are still standing and growing. One day they’ll be taller than us!
Afterwards, we all went for lunch together, tired and full of sand everywhere, but very happy. These tree-planting meetups have become a favorite tradition of ours, and we’re very grateful that, year after year, postcrossers choose to spend a saturday morning planting trees in this important forest.
We’d love to see similar initiatives happening elsewhere too! If you know a local organization that could use a hand planting trees (or doing other outdoor conservation work), why not gather a few postcrossers and give it a try? 💪
Here’s to trees and postcards — and to caring for the Earth together!
50 comments so far
beautiful initiative! thank you for sharing <3
Lovely concept! Let's do these tree-planting postcard-writing meetups all around the world!
🌿🍀🍁🍂🍃
Great idea, 👌 everyone should plants a tree 🌳.
Thank you for helping the earth. 🌎 Every tree planted becomes a little more sky, shade and birdsong.
That's a great initiative! 👍 Thank you for the report. 🌳
it is a good activity!!!
🥰 These actions are very important! Following several fires and, this year, also the storms, Portugal has a very small forest area. We need these actions every year 🫶
Great initiative!
Great Idea!
What a good project, repeating work every year and despite the weather!
I recently sent out seedspostcards, supporting for the good cause. The card can be planted and if it goes well, give flowers or herbs..... Those can not be sent worldwide however.
It is not a tree, but nevertheless something nature.
My children's school found a wonderful organization, I hope more schools (at least here in the U.S.) participate. The website is called " Neighborhood forest.org " and each child that enrolls gets a free tree 🌲 to plant. I love that something like this is available since so many wildfires have devastated many areas worldwide, it's so good that we can bring life back to those affected areas. ❤️🌲
What a wonderful idea... Thank you.
What a great activity! It does seem like postcrossers will be more inclined to join an activity like planting trees. Happy Earth Day!
Happy Earth Day and thank you for sharing this great story. We can always learn from each other.
Such a beautiful thing to do. Happy Earth Day and thank you for helping the earth! 🌍🌳
That is wonderful activity, thank you for sharing <3
This is so amazing!!! I would LOVE to do something similar!
Well done ❤️❤️❤️
Here’s to trees, conservation and to Postcrossing!🌳🌲🌱🍃
Happy Earth Day.....sharing great attitudes and planting trees 🌳 is very special. Thanks for showing up in the "little rain forest."
So good! 💚🌲💚🌲
Congratulations and best wishes to everyone involved in this super important initiative! :)
Love this! 🌱 I bet postcrossers around here would be super excited into joining something like planting trees, we need it so much nowadays.
Like Michelle’s child’s school our local library in Wurtsboro, NY did the same thing and I got a tree for my 1 year old granddaughter, Persephone. Last year I got one also and it survived this harsh winter we had. Plus today I attended a donor’s celebration and all us donors received bonsai trees as gifts in honor of giving life to another person and the earth.
I’m so pleased to see you people involved in preserving and helping nature.
Oh,I also wanted to let everyone know I did a presentation about postcrossing at the same library today. William and Sybella were very enthusiastic about becoming new postcrossers . Spread the word.
💚💚💚I love it!!!🙌🏽 Beautiful and inspiring project.... i've got some research to do to start here!!!💚💚💚
Thank you for making a better and greener future for our next generation!
Bravo! Great initiative!
Happy Earth Day & Happy Postcrossing!
Good afternoon! Many years ago, when I was in sixth grade, I took part in an event: planting pine trees to restore a pine forest. It was amazing! Several classes from our school participated. Now it's a beautiful forest. It's over 50 years old.
I'm proud of being a postcrosser.
It's a so great idea for the planet 😁🌎🌍🌏
LOVE this! Thank you.
Great event!
Great job y'all!
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Great! And the Viriatos look totally delicious! Yum! :-)
Hope to see pictures as forrest grows bigger :)
That’s a really great initiative - well done everybody! 👏👏👏
I’d love to join one of these
Anyone in Sydney Australia want to plant some trees?
Good Job! Husband and I have been planting as many native trees as we can on our property, hoping that as we get older and less able to tend to the gardens, we will be able to sit back and enjoy the little forest we made.
What a great initiative and such a blessing for the planet.
If we can do this in more countries that would be fantastic.
Further proof of how amazing Postcrossers are! This was wonderful to read. Plus, I now know that there was a storm named after me!
I planted two ginkos in the garden last week. Babies, but happily coming into leaf!
Such dedication to improving our beautiful blue marble!!
well done, bravo!
So cute!
I don’t know why, but this made me so happy! I’ve been trying to convince people of all ages to sign up for post crossing because it’s a way for a lot of Americans to feel the connection to the world outside of their own town, which many need. I will exclusively be using these to send all of my postcards going forward! Excited to see who receives them because I enjoy receiving the postcards for a variety of reasons, including the stamps themselves. Other countries have such gorgeous and outstanding stamps. Sending you all much love!
Love the triangle shape & my favorite is the under water one. Now I hope we can get a domestic postcard stamp to use for Postcrossing! Pleeeeeease! Lol
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