Apart from storing carbon, helping prevent flooding, improving the air we breathe, giving us shade, and cooling the air in hot weather, what have the trees ever done for us? Just ask a passing schoolchild!

Greening Wymondham wants to know more about the trees in the town and how we stand tree-wise. We want to try to find the economic value of the services trees provide.

So – and Wymondham Magazine is the first to know – we are starting a community campaign to map them.

Nicola Maunders and Rob Morgan are leading the charge, using a free app devised by Open University called Treezilla. It involves measuring the tree’s height and girth and then noting its species and location. It’s part of the Monster Mapping of trees that quantifies the riches lurking on our streets, parks and gardens.

Once the data is loaded, the app can actually give the amount of runoff avoided, carbon removed and stored, water intercepted, and air quality improved. It then gives an economic value to the tree, based on recognized costs of mitigation.

Why bother? Well, not much is known about urban trees or their numbers or values – despite the fact 80 percent of us live in towns or cities that benefit from the work trees do. As any primary school child will tell you – that includes cleaning our air, providing shade and absorbing run-off.

Our urban trees are also under attack from councils who don’t want the cost of managing them, developers wanting ease of access, disease and weather.

At least, if we have an economic value for our leafy friends, we can add that to their defence alongside the pleasure they give us, the biodiversity they contribute, and their sheer beauty.

Many trees in central Wymondham have a general protection under Conservation Area rulings, but most in the wider area do not. It will be fascinating to find out what types of trees we have and how much they contribute just by being there.

And you can join in too – it means just downloading the free app, selecting your experience level, and starting from there – with no more than thumbtacks and a tape measure and someone to watch your back.

As you get more experienced, you can add more information about the health of the tree and other parameters. Find out more about it here.

And while we’re on the subject – by November, Greening Wymondham will have given one thousand small trees to the town’s Year Six pupils. We’d love to hear from students about their trees, some of which will be four years old this autumn. We’ll be featuring them on our website and social media – and, of course, in this magazine.

Greening Wymondham is also about to start an amphibian survey of the main pond in Friarscroft Wood from March to the end of May. This is ahead of possibly expanding and deepening the water in late autumn. If you’d like to help, email us at greening.wymondham@gmail.com.