May 2014 – Planting Trees with Baltimore Tree Trust

We volunteered with the Baltimore Tree Trust for our May event. BTT is committed to restoring the city’s urban forest and making Baltimore a more healthy and beautiful place to live through increased tree plantings, tree stewardship, community engagement, public education, advocacy, and research. Collaborating with the city’s TreeBaltimore program, nonprofit partners, private landowners, city residents, and businesses, the BTT seeks to help restore Baltimore’s aging tree canopy.

We were in the McElderry Park neighborhood and our assignment was to plant 30 trees. Planting a tree is a lot of work – it ‘s not just dropping a tree in a hole and covering it with some dirt. We had to dig a hole in the ground about 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, put in the tree, fill in the rest of the hole with the dirt we dug up, then cover the area with a wheelbarrow full of mulch. Each tree planted requires at least three people and it is a much more arduous task than most people would think. Everyone grabbed a pair of gloves and a shovel and got to work!

It wound up being a little more work than just planting the 30 trees, so it was great that we had 30 volunteers attend this event, our best turnout to date. It was more work than we had expected because a few of the trees we had to plant were going in where another tree once stood. All that was left when we got to it was a stump of a dead tree and a whole web of roots that went so far underground that we had no idea where they ended. We had to dig up all the roots before being able to place the new tree in the ground and boy was it tough. We were using tools to uproot these stumps that looked like they would not be related to landscaping at all. It was tough work, but a lot of fun and everyone really had a good time.

To learn more about Baltimore Tree Trust go here: www.baltimoretreetrust.org and if you would like to volunteer with them, contact BTT’s executive director, Amanda Cunningham: amanda@baltimoretreetrust.org.