What a bunch of do-gooders

There is something extremely satisfying about spending an entire Saturday morning outside, doing physical labor to help the greater good, performing tasks needing a team and sustained effort to accomplish, while breathing fresh air and commenting from time to time about what a great morning it is. And it’s especially good to then see the day’s first drops of rain on your windshield as you drive home. I’ve done Friends of Trees plantings in the rain. I think the most wet and muddy I’ve ever been in my life was at the end of a planting session in St. Johns a couple of years ago, in a downpour. The crew leader forgot the wire clippers, so a group of us spent a half hour hugging the 400 lb rootballs of a pair of trees, working to detach the wire cages that hold the mud together for transplanting, then wrestling them into the holes while kneeling in the dirt. It was fun, but I don’t have a burning desire to do it that way every time.

Today, the conditions were perfect – dry, not too hot, not too cold – and the wire baskets came off with no difficulty. I helped in the Piedmont neighborhood (more on that tomorrow), while other teams were assigned to homes in Humboldt, Eliot, Overlook, Boise, and King neighborhoods – all in North and Northeast Portland. This planting session was co-sponsored by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), as part of their mitigation requirement for the impact to neighborhoods and stormwater runoff of widening I-5 in the Delta Park area.

A couple walked past our tree-planting group this morning, looking like they were on their way for breakfast or coffee, and the guy actually said, “What a bunch of do-gooders!”. But he smiled, and then thanked us. I’m guessing Friends of Trees is one do-gooder organization few Portlanders can find objectionable. It gets some public funding, but also relies on grants, memberships, private donations, and volunteers to further its mission of “inspiring community stewardship by bringing people in the Portland-Vancouver area together to plant and care for city trees and urban natural areas.”

My team of six planted eight trees today, in the sidewalk planter strips outside five homes. The trees aren’t the little saplings you buy at Fred Meyer, that even I can lift with one hand. These babies are huge, very ready to be street trees immediately, with many at least 10 feet tall. Most of the tree-planting volunteers are the residents of the homes receiving the trees, but anyone can show up to help. Today we planted without the homeowner’s assistance at a residence with an elderly occupant, and at another where the owners were sick. Friends of Trees has an impressive structure of volunteer coordinators and team leaders keeping everyone organized, safe, and planting correctly. My crew leader this morning has helped with more than 200 Friends of Trees planting events. Although the planting is done at this time of year, volunteers work year round planning the events. Locations for new trees are entirely chosen by the residents, usually homeowners. Friends of Trees charges them about $75 per tree, which still provides a subsidy compared with the purchase price. Their philosophy is that requiring owners to help buy (and whenever possible, help plant) their trees makes it more likely the owner will feel investment and take good care of them.

There’s more to planting a tree than “roots down”.

The most common mistake is to plant them too deep, without looking for the graft point which most nursery trees have below the soil line in their purchase container. Second most frequent error is probably failing to water them adequately for the first year. Trees should be planted November – March, when they’re dormant and natural rain helps them get established before the summer, but even then they need 10 gallons of water per week.

Friends of Trees has plantings scheduled every Saturday morning from now until the fourth Saturday of March. Please consider skipping the gym or your morning stroll one of those days, and help out. It feels so good to exercise your muscles making a practical difference, one which you can see when you’re done. You meet some delightful people. There are tasks for all ages and physical abilities – if you can’t lift or dig, you can help with registration, providing juice/coffee/treats beforehand, or serving lunch later to weary workers. It’s a very Portland thing, and as noted in this comment on my tree photograph post, the Friends of Trees organization is making a visible and measurable difference.