This year's Bord Bia Bloom festival aimed to inspire its 100,000 + visitors to take positive actions towards a healthier, more environmentally conscious world. With this theme and the perfect sunny weather, the Irish Tree Explorers Network (ITEN) picked the ideal stage to kick-start their new project.  

On April 27th, 2023, an event at University College Cork (UCC) brought together experts, practitioners, policymakers, and stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to discuss a critical topic: "Delivering Sustainable Urban Forests." This one-day symposium, organised by the UCC Arboretum group, aimed to shed light on the essential role of urban trees in creating vibrant, healthy, and sustainable cities and towns. The discussions held during the symposium underscored the critical importance of urban forests in promoting biodiversity, addressing climate challenges, enhancing culture, supporting human health and well-being, and contributing to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.    

Irish Tree Explorers Network (ITEN) is a collaboration between the School of BEES (Dr Eoin Lettice and Dr Barbara Doyle Prestwich) and the School of English and Digital Humanities (Prof. Claire Connolly). ITEN builds on the success of the Tree Explorers projects that have been based in the globally accredited UCC Arboretum since 2021. ITEN allows the project team to take what's been learned in the projects based in Cork and bring that to a national audience through partnerships with Coillte, the Office of Public Works (OPW) and the Tree Council of Ireland