A Tree Isn’t Finished When It’s Planted

Have you ever planted something and then quietly forgotten about it? Be honest. Most of us have.

Kenya plants trees well. We have planting days, planting targets, and planting photos. What we’re less good at is what happens in month three, when the rains stop, the cameras have gone, and nobody’s watching.

So let’s talk about month three.

What actually kills a young tree?

Rarely the planting itself. Almost always, it’s what comes after.

No water in the dry months.

A study of tree planting across Kitui, Machakos and Makueni found that simply watering seedlings raised their survival by 35%. Researchers working in Kenya’s eastern drylands have also pointed to erratic rainfall, poor quality seedlings and poor seedling management as the reasons so many young trees don’t make it.

And it isn’t only small farms. In Samburu’s Kirisia Forest, an audit found that only about 60% of 30,000 seedlings survived after the water bowser used to irrigate them broke down during a drought.

Goats and cows can find them before the roots take hold.

A tender seedling is a snack. In the same dryland study, fencing farms increased seedling survival by 7.8%. In Ethiopia’s Oromia region, researchers found that community plantations had the lowest survival of all, and damage from grazing was one of the reasons.

Mulch piled straight against the stem.

Mulch is meant to help. Spread around the roots, it holds moisture in the soil. But heaped up against the trunk in a little volcano, it keeps the bark constantly wet and invites rot, disease, and decay. The fix is easy: spread mulch in a ring like a doughnut, and leave a small gap around the stem.

Nobody left responsible. And this is the one I want to dwell on.

Why does ownership matter more than the ceremony?

Because a tree with a name attached to it, someone who checks on it, waters it, and notices when it’s struggling- has a far better chance than one planted and left.

This isn’t a guess. It’s a pattern that keeps showing up in the research.

In Rwanda, a study of trees planted between 2007 and 2011 found that privately owned agroforestry trees survived at an average of 51%, while trees on public land managed only 30%. Almost four in ten people surveyed admitted they had given their trees no care at all after planting.

In Ethiopia’s Oromia region, community-managed plantations had the lowest average survival, at about 42%. When researchers asked why, people pointed to a lack of ownership, no individual benefit, poor practices, and short-term thinking.

And here at home, a Kenyan study of more than 16,000 seedlings found that land tenure, meaning who owns and controls the land, was linked to whether seedlings survived.

It’s the same pattern I’ve watched in school garden projects, the ones that succeed and the ones that fail. The gardens that thrive always have someone. A teacher who stays back. A pupil who comes in on Saturday with a jerrycan. A parent who notices the goat before it gets in.

The ceremony plants the tree. The person grows it.

What should change about how we plant?

So what do we do differently next time?

• Assign a person to every tree, not just a target number to every school. A name, not a number.
• Budget for water and maintenance before planting day, not after. If there’s no plan for the dry season, there’s no plan.
• Choose species suited to the site, not just what’s cheapest or easiest to find. Planting ecologically unsuitable species is one of the reasons dryland seedlings fail.
• Plant near the trees we already have, where we can. In a study of 176 restoration sites, saplings planted near existing mature trees had roughly a 20% higher chance of survival.
• Follow up at one month, six months, and one year, and be honest about what you find. A dead seedling in your records is information. A dead seedling you never counted is a lie we tell ourselves.

None of these needs a big budget. They need us to care about the tree for longer than the event lasts.

A tree isn’t finished when it’s planted. It’s finished when it stands, years later, on its own.

To everyone who has ever gone back to check on a tree they planted: thank you. That follow-up visit is the real conservation work.

Now it’s your turn. Do you know where the last tree you planted is? Go and check this week, and tell me what you find.