Creat Huntington Tree Committee Has Strategy Meeting

Jessica Pressman heads up the "Tree Committee" of the Create Huntington organization. This active citizen/government action groups internet link is http://www.createhuntington.com/. According to an email we received from Jessica, the committee held a strategy meeting last night. Here is her report;

"We had a very exciting and productive meeting last night. Thanks so much to everyone who was able to attend and, for those of you who were unable to attend, we missed you! Here’s an overview of what we discussed.

We’ve come up with some goals, long term, mid-term and short term. Our first priority is raising money for the seedlings we are going to buy. We are going to purchase 1,000 tree seedlings, half ornamental (perhaps flowering crabapple) and half shade trees (probably oak or maple). We need to raise about $2,000 and we need to do it very quickly so that we can purchase and plant our seedlings. Our goal is to have the money raised by April 20th. River and Rail Micronursery has generously offered to store them, free of charge, for us until next spring. We will need volunteers to get the seedlings planted and ready for storage! I’m thinking we could get a local boy/girl scout troop to help us out. This will probably take place at the end of the month or the first week of May 2009.

Our mid-term goal is to continue to raise money over the summer so that we can plant some larger trees in the fall, both downtown and in a few neighborhoods. This would give us a more immediate impact. We also discussed the idea of a “trophy tree area” where people could donate trees and we would honor them with some type of plaque.

Our long term goal is our community tree planting event, which will take place in April 2010. This is when we will be giving away the tree seedlings that have been growing for a year… by this time, the seedlings will be more viable and our survival rate will be much higher.

We are going to have a plastic pot drive to collect pots for the trees. This time of year, people are buying plants at nurseries and throwing away the potx. We need 1, 3 and 5 (mostly 5) gallon pots in which we can plant the seedlings (no flats please). We haven’t ironed out the details of this yet but we know that one drop off point will be the Earth Day event being put on by the Weed and Seed program on April 22nd. We’re also looking for a drop off point for our plastic pot drive so if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

The Weed and Seed Earth Day event is Wednesday, April 22nd at the Barnett Center. It’s taking place from 3pm-7pm and we are going to set up a table and hand out some free seedlings that their youth group purchased. We are going to use event as an opportunity to collect pots and, also, to try to raise a little money for our project (a one dollar donation buys a seedling!). If you are interested in helping out, even for one or two hours, please let me know.

So, for now, let’s focus on raising money. We are hoping that we can do this quickly and informally. We do want to hit up some corporate sponsors for our autumn project once we have the money for the seedlings… these types of donations seem to take a little more preparation. If ten of us could raise $200, we’d be done! So, please, hit up your friends and family and let’s try to raise some money!

On a side note, the folks at the Earth Day Event are going to make bird feeders out of plastic water and soda bottles (12oz – 24 oz). Apparently no plastic is being recycled right now due to low demand, so if you want to “recycle” your plastic bottles, you can drop them off at Barnett and they will be used to make bird feeders for the children to take home with them.

We haven't set a date for our next meeting; it will depend on how quickly we are able to raise our money. I'll be in touch with the details as soon as possible! Thanks again for your support!"

Jessica Pressman

(Jessica may be reached at Jessica.Pressman@va.gov.)