October 2015 – Baltimore's Biggest Tree Planting Ever

Our October event was one of our most successful to date because of the amount of work that we took on and the impact we had. We hosted “Baltimore’s Biggest Tree Planting Ever” and we hope to make this an annual event. We partnered with the Baltimore Tree Trust, Parks & People, Blue Water Baltimore and the Baltimore Community ToolBank to make it happen. We had three plant sites, one with each of these organizations and had our after party at the ToolBank. We had 150 volunteers attend our event and we planted 256 trees. These are not easy trees to get into the ground either. We were planting mostly street trees and the soil is so hard that it feels like you are trying to shovel through concrete.

It is a great event for so many reasons, but I love it because planting a tree requires teamwork. More teamwork than you would think. You need 2-3 people digging the hole because it is so tiring and you need at least two people to roll the tree into the hole you have just dug. The trees are pretty big and the hole you need to dig is probably about four feet in diameter and three feet deep. It can take some time to get to the point that you are ready to place the tree in the hole.

Our party was held at the Baltimore Community ToolBank, another outstanding nonprofit partner of ours. We had free beer provided by Diamondback Brewery and SweetWater Brewery and free wine. We had the band Time Police playing and the Koko food truck serving some great Korean fusion food.  Everyone hung out there for a few hours and had a great time. We are already looking forward to having this event again next year and we hope to make it even bigger and better than this one!