This week details of how the nation will celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee were announced.
While Her Majesty will pass this amazing 70-year milestone of service to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth next month, the main celebration will take place during a four-day bank holiday weekend in early June.
The additional bank holiday will provide an opportunity for communities and people throughout the country to come together to mark this historic milestone. While the focus of June’s celebration will be in London with the Queen’s Birthday Parade and the Platinum Party at the Palace, plans will be afoot in many communities in North Yorkshire to come together to honour the monarch in our special way.
In addition, a number of nationwide initiatives are already underway. They include the competition to create a Platinum Pudding as a lasting reminder of the Jubilee in same the way Coronation Chicken was invented to mark the Queen’s accession to the throne in 1952.
I am sure the brilliant bakers and dessert-makers of North Yorkshire will be working on their ideas to create something delicious!
My limited culinary skills certainly rule me out of contention but I have been involved in another project to create a lasting legacy of this unique celebration.
The Queen’s Green Canopy is a tree planting campaign which invites people from across the United Kingdom to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee”.
Everyone from individuals to Scout and Girlguiding groups, villages, counties, schools and corporate bodies are being encouraged to play their part in creating the Queen’s Green Canopy by planting trees during the official planting season which runs until March and then from October through to the end of the Jubilee year.
I’ve had the privilege of planting two trees already as part of this campaign which will have long-term benefits for the environment in the form of carbon capture – a mature tree can absorb up to 150kg of CO2 a year.
At Richmond Castle I planted a tree in the shadow of the keep – one of more than 70 trees being planted at castles, stately homes and abbeys owned by English Heritage. Another has been planted at Mount Grace Priory by children from Osmotherley Primary School.
At Little Danby Hall, near Northallerton, I joined estate and land agent Robin Jessop to plant a tree which will be one of many he is donating to his clients who purchase properties this year. All the plantings will be registered with the Queen’s Green Canopy – both to mark the Jubilee but also the 20th anniversary of the foundation of Robin Jessop Ltd.
Every tree will be ‘pinned’ on a digital map to mark the planting. You can find out how you can contribute to a lasting legacy of this celebration of our Queen’s tremendous service to our country at www.queensgreencanopy.org.
Today I am meeting the chief executives of the Post Office and WH Smith to discuss the problems we have experienced with the Northallerton Post Office branch. In short, the service has not been acceptable in recent months.
They have agreed to travel to Northallerton so I can gain a full understanding of the issues they have with the staffing and the opening hours of the branch. I will be reporting back on their plans to resolve the problem.
