A crew leader’s story to inspire us for the new year

Crew leader Ellen Mendoza shares her experience as a crew leader at a rainy Friends of Trees planting earlier this month. You can read her story on her blog.

Below is an excerpt:

A neighborhood tree planting appears to operate on the exact opposite premise of the old movie, Field of Dreams. In the movie the catch phrase was “If you build it, they will come,” referring to a magical baseball game that would happen when a baseball field is created.

For a tree planting, it seems like the adage should be, “If they come, we will build it,” because the trees just can’t get planted unless the volunteers show up with their trucks and muscles and willingness. Every time it comes together, and every time it is a magical thing.

In reality of course, volunteers and the paid staff have spent months getting all the parts together so that  we can’t help but rise early, don our raincoats and go out to get very wet and dirty and put some trees in the ground. Today, two dozen crews planted 250 trees.

If you would like to be a crew leader with Friends of Trees, please consider signing up for one of our January trainings: our Neighborhood Trees Crew Leader Training on January 27 and 29 or our Green Space Initiative Crew Leader Training on January 29. We also hope you’ll consider joining us at one of our plantings on January 8 to help us plant our 400,000th tree.

Many thanks to our crew leaders, who lead teams of planters in all kinds of weather, and to our weekend planters who’ve helped us plant 400,000 trees and shrubs.

See you in 2011!