Kijabe

In Kijabe, a small town not far from Nairobi, LEAF works with the Kijabe Forest Trust, employing nursery staff to harvest seeds, germinate and look after seedlings, eventually fuelling local tree planting events.

They plant approximately 20,000 trees a year, creating habitat for monkeys, leopards, sun birds and eagles amongst many others.

Wood fuel is an important natural resource in the communities surrounding Kijabe, which, over the last century, has contributed in part to the declines of some of the endemic species that are found here, but now more trees are being planted than are extracted.

Over the recent months the Kijabe Nursery has steadily been planting, germinating and bagging seedlings for planting in 2021. We have managed to double our hardening off area so more trees are of a good size for planting. We have also fenced off the area in order to keep small antelope and rabbits from eating the seedlings. 

The KFT nursery has seven different variety of seedlings. They include: Acacia abysinnica, Acacia gerradi, Dombeya torrida, Croton sp., Procera juniperius, Olea Capensis, and Sesbania sp.

Our work in Kijabe is led by our full-time groundskeeper Stephen Njenga.

Stephen comes from the Kijabe area. His mother is a widow and raised 6 children. Stephen is the father of 3 young men and he has worked very hard to see that they have a good home and are well educated.

Stephen began working for Kijabe Forest Trust in 1992 and has remained a faithful hardworking grounds keeper for that entire time. He has a natural ability to grow and look after plants of all kinds but especially trees. When KFT decided to start a seedling nursery here at Naivasha last year it seemed only natural to have Stephen be the fulltime Greenhouse/Nursery employee. Stephen has also been able to help us with actual tree planting as he knows what KFT wants and requires, but he also has a good connection to the community around Kijabe so as to get people who are ready and able to work to plant trees.

With the introduction of the Greenhouse last May Stephen has managed to keep a steady stream of seedlings for KFT and others to plant. So far he has germinated and transplanted over 30,000 seedlings for KFT. He probably has close to that many in the greenhouse right now preparing to be planted in 2020.