Heritage Planting- a selfless act for schools

Hi everyone, we're Silverwood Special school and we're really committed to ensuring that we have really diverse greenspaces. We've committed to planting lots of heritage trees around our school site including Dog rose, Elder, Dog wood, Downy Birch, Cherry, Silver Birch and Hazel. The saplings are small and everyone made a really tremendous effort to plant two hundred of them in a single morning. Students really enjoyed the experience and our green infrastructure has been improved immeasurably but the hardest lesson was accepting the fact that by the time the trees are big enough, our students who planted them would have finally left the school and be embarking on the early stages of their adulthood. We've therefore been giving very mindful statements that have changed students' thinking on the bigger purpose of planting. That they may not enjoy the shade from their leaves, nor enjoy the fruits or even watch the wildlife amongst the branches...but the next generation of students will. We're therefore committed in underpinning the 'selflessness' of this type of planting and really overlearning the fact that this is legacy and heritage planting for the future. This has been a concept that our students have really understood and accepted. The staff are so incredibly proud of this fact. I was wondering whether any other schools are having these type of conversations with their students? These conversations are really developing a greater sense of self/ purpose and understanding. One student mentioned that "one day I hope a bird will make her nest in this tree Sir"- I was really moved. So proud of the well being and mindfulness that planting lends to humankind.