This week on the Do London Differently podcast, we welcomed Paul Wood and Sarah Hayes from the Urban Tree Festival to the London National Park City Visitor Centre on Mortimer Street. This is the first in our series of London Walking Festival podcasts for May 2026, and what better way to kick things off than talking trees?

The Urban Tree Festival runs from 9 to 17 May, and this year marks its ninth edition. Paul, one of the co-founders, told us how it all began back in 2017 when the GLA’s London Tree Week came to an end and a group of tree lovers decided to organise their own festival. What started as a crowdfunded three-day bank holiday weekend grew dramatically during lockdown, when the festival went online and expanded to nine days across two weekends.

Sara joined the team four years ago, bringing her background in walking trails, public art and event design. One of the most significant developments under her leadership was the establishment of the Urban Tree Festival CIC in December 2024, giving the organisation the formal status needed to pursue funding and deepen partnerships.

A home for the first time

For the first time ever, the festival has a physical base. Art Hub Studios in New Cross, an old school building just 100 metres from New Cross station, will host a launch event on the evening of 9 May, an art exhibition called The Urban Forest (with over 65 submissions of paintings, drawings, films, performances and poetry), and a student-run cafe courtesy of the festival’s Goldsmiths University interns.

What’s on

With over 60 events listed so far, and satellite programmes in places like Plymouth adding many more, there is something for everyone. Highlights include:

Paul is leading two Tree Hunting walks in North and South London, drawing on the trees featured in his book Tree Hunting: 1000 Trees to Find in Britain and Ireland’s Towns and Cities. Peter Coles, London’s mulberry tree expert, returns with two guided walks that always sell out, plus a late addition exploring the orchard in Greenwich Park. A panel discussion on Community Stewardship of Trees, chaired by Paul and sponsored by Vauxhall One BID, takes place on Wednesday 13 May at Camelford House (right next to the MI5 building), featuring speakers from Trees for Cities, Lambeth Council, Hackney Tree Nursery and Bonnington Square.

The Grapefruit Tree walk on Monday at 3.30pm explores the story of a grapefruit tree on Queenstown Road in Battersea, brought over from the Caribbean by a woman who has since passed away. The tree is now protected, and the walk explores heritage stories from the local community. It is also available as a self-guided walk with a QR code.

The Happy Man Tree film screens on Sunday 10 May in Vauxhall, telling the story of a community’s fight to save a tree on a Hackney housing estate from redevelopment. Bernadette Russell, a dedicated tree guardian, is running an event sharing her experience of caring for a street tree. And Mel Sutton, one of the original co-founders, opens and closes the festival with online tree-themed meditations at 9am on the first and last days.

The festival also reaches well beyond London, with online events from Africa, the Netherlands and Australia.

Looking ahead

Paul and Sarah shared their dream for the future: an Urban Tree Festival that moves to a different London borough each year, inspired by the London Borough of Culture model. With the 10th anniversary on the horizon in 2027, conversations about what that milestone could look like are already underway.

We also talked about the growing movement around fruit tree harvesting in London. At London National Park City, we launched a fruit harvest leader training programme this year expecting two or three sign-ups. We had around a hundred, and have trained about 40 leaders so far. There is huge untapped potential in the city’s back gardens and housing estates, where fruit often goes to waste.

Get involved

Visit urbantreefestival.org to browse the full programme and book events. Follow the Urban Tree Festival on social media (and help them get their TikTok followers above five). For self-guided tree walks, try Go Jauntly, Tree Talk, Footways or the TiCL app.

And if you want to track your own walking this May, download the Go Jauntly app and join the London Walking Festival’s challenge to get 10,000 Londoners walking a million miles in May.