37 new Green Space Crew Leaders trained last Saturday

By Andrew Land

This past Saturday morning, 37 future Green Space Initiative (GSI) crew leaders gathered around free Starbucks coffee and Voodoo doughnuts at the Audubon Society of Portland for Friends of Trees’ annual crew leader training. It’s a truly beautiful place, well worth a visit if you haven’t already been.

The new crew leaders started the day with a quick huddle and then headed into the woods, both to learn how to lead future GSI crews and to continue the habitat restoration of the Audubon sanctuary. Each crew was accompanied by a veteran crew leader who guided, motivated and shared their knowledge of the native species they were planting. Within a few hours, several hundred native trees and shrubs were situated in their new home.

Just after noon, everyone headed back indoors at Audubon for a lunch generously provided by Hot Lips Pizza in a conference room with a great view of Forest Park. For the next few hours, veteran crew leaders and Friends of Trees staff gave presentations on such topics as the tools of the trade and how they should be handled, how best to dress for the elements, and how to identify native species in the winter.

Now that we’ve got a new team of trained and motivated GSI crew leaders, we hope that you might consider joining them for any of the nearly three dozen natural area plantings they will be leading this planting season.

Please visit the Friends of Trees online calendar to see if there are times and locations that might work well for you. You can just show up on the day of planting around 8:45 for coffee and doughnuts, and we’ll provide all the tools and guidance you’ll need. All we ask is that you come dressed for the weather and ready to have fun!

If you’re interested in becoming a GSI crew leader with Friends of Trees, we’ll be holding a mid-winter training at Brown’s Ferry Park in Tualatin on Saturday, January 29. For more reasons to become a volunteer crew leader with us, please read more on our blog, Growth Rings.

Please contact Andrew Land at [email protected] if you have any questions or would like more information. We hope to work with you at some point this season!

–Land is the Volunteer & Outreach Specialist and can be reached at 503-282-8846 ext. 18.