Ailsa Lamont runs a consultancy business – Pomegranate Global – that advises education providers on how they can run their operations in a more environmentally aware way. Pomegranate Global emphasises practical solutions to real-life problems, so it’s perhaps not surprising that Ailsa walks the talk when it comes to her own business practices. Even a sustainability consultant cannot operate without some impact on the planet. In recognition of her need to fly for work purposes, Ailsa recently sponsored 140 trees in partnership with Fifteen Trees.

This effectively makes up for the emissions of all the flights Ailsa took/will take in 2019. As regular readers will know, every single planting is the result of a collaboration. In this case, the number and variety of people involved in getting Ailsa’s trees in the ground is truly fascinating. The trees were planted at a site near Donald between Lake Boke and Lake Gil Gil. This may sound like the middle of nowhere, and most of the time it is, but once a year the site transforms itself into the Esoteric Music Festival. Where thousands of people descend to doof the weekend away. This past July a much smaller contingent of humans made their way to the site, private land owned by the Goldsmith family, to plant more than 5000 trees. The group included volunteers from Esoteric Festival, Buloke and Northern Grampians Landcare groups, St Arnaud Secondary School, Frederick Harold Sock Company and the local community. Over four freezing days they made a lasting, positive difference to the local ecosystem.

Ailsa’s 140 trees were among the 5000. They will grow to provide habitat for local wildlife, wind blocks and shade for stock and festival goers, prevent soil erosion, and assist in salinity and ground water take up. It takes an extraordinary network of people, finances, and organisation to complete a planting this size, and the benefits to the environment and community are equally complex and far-reaching. In twenty years’ time a festival goer might shelter under a tree that wouldn’t be there if Ailsa hadn’t taken the initiative to plant through Fifteen Trees.

No one person could make this kind of impact on their own. The beauty is – that no one has to! You can be a small part of the process and still be crucial to the outcome.

Contact us if you, like Ailsa, want to take your own small steps toward making huge, positive changes.

Article by Sarah Hart.

Sarah is an emerging self-taught artist whose passions include the stories and experiences of women and narrative driven creative work. Her aim is to delight, to reveal glimpses of everyday beauty, and to celebrate flights of the ordinary. Sarah works across a range of media, with an abiding interest in pen and ink, mixed media and the human form.