The Best gift of all - a tree in the Mara

Every Birthday guest at The Yurt has a tree planted in Kenya in their honour….

For as long as I can remember, guests who come to The Yurt on their birthday, receive a small gift of a tree planted, in their name, in the Maasai Mara in Kenya.

What does it really mean?

Planting trees is a tricky business and at Nicholsons we should know that as we've been doing it for 40 years. Drought is the biggest hazard to establishment and of course trying to plant trees in drylands of the Mara, has its fair share of challenges. We learned very early on that this was not an endeavour we could do remotely. We have been incredibly blessed in being able to collaborate with a wonderful safari lodge called House in the Wild, run by family friends, Tarquin and Lippa Wood, and they in turn run a philanthropic programme called Futures in the Wild. https://www.futuresinthewild.com/

As a family we were keen to support tree planting and offered to fund an arm called Trees in the Wild run by the most beautiful, intelligent, kind, caring and ambitious women… the Maasai. Our team wanted to call themselves Wild Women until we pointed out that that could be misunderstood! We have settled for Women in the Wild.

There are five women who work for the tree programme under professional management of Jane Nashpie. Jane is a local Maasai accountancy graduate, businesswoman mother and wife. She is kind, thoughtful, highly organised and completely selfless. Her personal motto is “be good not seen”. She has incredible presence and to me demonstrates that beautiful kind of leadership… her behaviour leaves you in no doubt as to how you must behave!

Together, between our funding, and the enduring hard work of Women in Wild, we have planted 15,000 trees per year for many years now.

It started in 2018 with a small tree nursery in a Wild Shamba and now has escalated to a tree planting programme across 7 schools impacting thousands of children.

Our team at Rosara and Nicholsons feel it is our community too… we care deeply about the people there and we are very aware that our first world society and impacts on climate is having an adverse effect on food security in the region. The project gives us real opportunity to give back. We see the excitement in the children's faces to be planting and nurturing trees …. and it is this gift that we give to you on your birthday. Happy Birthday!