Bicycling for the love of trees and water

By Teri Ruch

Mix about 20 bicycles, a dozen carts and trailers, 190 big trees, planting tools, the perfect pre-spring morning and 75 volunteers—from babies to boomers—and what do you get?

A fun planting day that ended with a community potluck and new trees to clean our rivers, add shade to neighborhoods, and make our air healthier. Forty of the 190 trees planted Saturday, many weighing 200 pounds each, were carried by bicycle along with tools, stakes and mulch.

“It shows that Portland is a great city when people roll up their sleeves to plant trees together,” City Commissioner Dan Saltzman told Friends of Trees volunteers before they set out in teams to plant. “You are in the frontline of the effort to clean our rivers. We need trees to keep stormwater out of our sewer system.”

The Friends of Trees planting in the Montavilla and Mt. Tabor neighborhoods was part of two Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) efforts to curb stormwater runoff: the Tabor to the River project, with a goal to improve the Brooklyn Creek Basin from Mt. Tabor to the Willamette using sewer enhancements, green stormwater management and tree plantings; and the five-year Grey to Green Initiative (G2G), launched last year to green the city’s greyscape by adding more ecoroofs, bioswales, restored natural areas and trees.

As a partner in G2G, Friends of Trees is helping the city reach its goal of planting 83,000 street and yard trees in five years. Last year the nonprofit planted more street and yard trees than in any previous year of its 20-year history, and this year Friends of Trees hopes to double that number.

Friends of Trees’ model offers homeowners both quality trees at affordable prices and organized community plantings, which give people a vested interest in their trees and ensures that two things grow at the same time: the city’s tree cover and its corps of tree-planting citizens.

Friends of Trees Executive Director Scott Fogarty emphasized this point when he told the planting volunteers on March 6, “You’re making a statement today by planting trees for the greater good.”

Friends of Trees board member Nancy Buley, who directs marketing for J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., which sponsored Saturday’s planting, encouraged the planters to “pick up a pen” as well as a shovel. She’s been advocating in D.C. for more funding for trees. “We need to get political about trees,” she said.

Some of the younger planters, however, seemed happy just to be outside planting.

“Rhys and I had an amazing day,” said Richard Greensted, who carried mulch, stakes, tools and his son Rhys by bicycle to the places where his bike team planted.

“Spending quality time with my son, getting some exercise, and helping keep our rivers clean—what a great way to spend a day,” he said. “Before I had a chance to ask Rhys what he thought about the tree planting, he was asking me about when the next planting was!”

–Ruch is the communications director for Friends of Trees: [email protected]; 503-282-8846 ext. 17