The ladies who sold too many trees

By Andy Meeks

Our Neighborhood Trees program relies upon volunteer neighborhood coordinators (NCs) who canvass their neighborhoods to convince their fellow homeowners to plant trees in their planting strips.

We have amazing NCs—passionate, dedicated, and persuasive–but it’s not often that a neighborhood planting exceeds our sales expectations.

Case in point: This weekend’s planting event in the East Portland neighborhoods of Centennial, Mill Park and Hazelwood. At the beginning of planting season, our hope for these three neighborhoods was to plant 50 trees. But like so many before us, we underestimated East Portland.

This Saturday 106 trees are going to be planted, thanks to the amazing work of Hazelwood NC Vinette Kennedy-Scott and Friends of Trees’ very own Kate Farrington!

However, since we had not planned on nearly that many trees, we need more planting volunteers!

Please consider joining us this Saturday to drink coffee, eat doughnuts and plant 106 trees! It’s easy to get to the staging site—just east of I-205 and south of SE Stark—at Gethesmane Lutheran Church at 11560 SE Market Street. The planting will start at 9 a.m., so please arrive a little early to sign-in, enjoy some treats, and be assigned to a planting crew. And make sure to say ‘hi’ to Vinette and Kate, and thank them for working so hard to get more trees in East Portland. Thank you, ladies!

–Meeks is the volunteer and outreach specialist at Friends of Trees: 503-282-8846 ext. 24, [email protected]