Ukrainian refugees plant 27 shrubs with their community in Birmingham

An all-age group of Ukrainian refugees gathered in Fruit & Nut Village's Reaside Forest Garden in Balsall Heath, on 2nd February 2025, to plant shrubs to thank the community that is hosting and supporting them and to promote cultural understanding. Each shrub represents one of Ukraine’s 27 regions, and is labelled with a QR code that points to the Wikipedia page about that region. Here is an entire MFU group shot of all the wonderful volunteers who attended, with their banner proudly displayed.

On the clear Winter morning of Sunday 2nd February, our charity teamed up with Moseley for Ukraine, to commemorate their community in Birmingham, the wider Ukrainian community, and the country itself during this difficult time of war in the world, by bringing people of all ages together to plant 27 shrubs to represent the country's regions or oblasts. Children played whilst adults worked hard to plant the shrubs under Dan Burwood (Balsall Heath Area Manager) and Rob Tilling's (Stirchley Area Manager) expert guidance, as well as some land clearance, weeding, turf-cutting, and general forest gardening with the group of over 30 volunteers.

Lunchtime included home made Ukrainian snacks, bread and cakes, all donated, as well as delicious warming curry donated to us by Change Kitchen - thank you to everyone who made food for this heartwarming event, keeping us healthy and fed to help with the session's hard work!

Moseley for Ukraine is a project of Moseley Community Development Trust, helping Ukrainians in Birmingham to adapt and integrate into British society through information, educational support, and various cultural and craft events. Here are some of the MFU group with Dan in the background, after planting several of the shrubs.

The shrub-planting was organised by Moseley for Ukraine in partnership with the local conservation charity, Fruit & Nut Village. It is currently an anxious time for Ukrainian refugees, with uncertainty over visas and government decisions about their right to remain in the UK. Olga Popova, of Moseley for Ukraine, said:

“Right now, we have worries about visas and doubts about our future in the UK. We escaped from war and are so grateful for being here, so we wanted to say thank you to Birmingham for welcoming us, and to show how keen we are to stay an active part of life in our new home.

We wanted to give something beautiful to our local community, so we are delighted to team up with Fruit & Nut Village to plant shrubs in Balsall Heath. We also wanted to share a bit about ourselves with our neighbours, so each of the 27 shrubs is dedicated to an area of Ukraine (24 oblasts plus Kiev, Sevastopol and Crimea), with a QR code to find out more about it.”

Rob Tilling, who liaised with Olga to make this incredible event happen, said:

“This is exactly what our charity was set up for: our primary function is to build community, and we feel like we’re doing that today. We’re meeting new people, people are getting to make new connections, people from Ukraine are getting to know local people in Birmingham who have lived here all their lives – it’s just speeding up that process really, where people can get to know each other.”

Moseley for Ukraine Contact: Olga Popova, olgapopova@moseleyexchange.com