Category: Garry Diaries
Garry wonders: What does Earth Month mean for a tree (or shrub)?
Dear Diary,
Earth Month is here! How do I celebrate Earth Month? I plant trees. I meet up with friends. I stop and smell the flowers and take a minute to think about how all the plants and animals and lands and waters interact in ordered chaos across this giant globe spinning through space. Woah!
One of my favorite flowers to smell is the red-flowering currant, a native shrub we plant in so many of the natural areas where we work. It’s more than just a pretty red flower, of course. Those flowers provide nectar for bumblebees and hummingbirds, then they turn into delicious berries for other birds and critters. They can live on rocky bluffs or forest edges or in your backyard!
We’ll be mulching around our new native plants at stewardship events throughout April, making sure they have what they need to make it through the summer. And we’ll be sending out summer inspector volunteers to visit new neighborhood trees to make sure they’re set up for success too. It’s all about taking care of each other!
Some native shrubs, like another fave of mine the Western serviceberry, can be in the form of a tree or a shrub, raising the question I ask myself literally all the time: what does it mean to be a tree?
You might be thinking, Garry, you know what a tree is! It’s a tall, woody perennial plant characterized by a central trunk… Of course I know all that! But there’s a deeper answer to the question. A tree is more than just its structural parts. It’s part of a whole ecosystem, whether it’s in the middle of a forest or in your backyard. Of course, that’s true for shrubs too. Maybe we just abandon the dictionary investigation, Garry, and talk about what really matters: the spirit.
A tree is a testament to all the services we provide each other, starting with the simple exchange of air. I breathe in what you breathe out, and vice versa. That’s a fun fact we learn in elementary school, but it’s still amazing to think about! A tree is also a witness to history. Because trees can live for decades and even centuries, we get to see the way the land around us has changed and how it’s stayed the same.
When you plant a tree—or shrub, or some other plant—you’re kicking off a life in community with so many other lives. That’s what being a tree is all about, that’s what Earth Month is all about. I breathe in, you breathe out.
It’s almost the end of the planting season at Friends of Trees, and we’re almost at our goal of 30,000 new trees and native plants, all planted with the power of volunteers. Talk about community!
It’s totally worthy of a month-long celebration, and we want you to join us! You can come out to a planting or stewardship event, make a special gift to help us reach our goal, or just take a moment to appreciate the Earth and all the amazing things that live on it together.
Take care,
Garry
Garry is shaking with anticipation for Earth Month
Dear Diary,
Have you smelled the petrichor lately? I can’t get enough of that delicious smell after a spring rain. My tree friends are budding, my flower friends are popping, the days are getting longer, and I am trembling with anticipation—so much that you might think I’m a Quaking Aspen instead of an Oregon White Oak—because Earth Month is almost here!
Yes, we need a whole month! One Arbor Day and one Earth Day is just not enough. Think how big the Earth is and everything there is to celebrate: the lands and waters, plants and wildlife. All the ways that nature takes care of us and what we give back in return.
Speaking of taking care—in April we host stewardship events at our natural area plantings. If you’ve never been to one, you’re missing out. Maybe it’s not as glamorous as planting, but it is oh so satisfying to be a part of an epic bucket brigade and see a huge pile of mulch dwindle to nothing as we spread it around my native plant friends, newly planted and in need of some protection from the summer heat. Stewardship events are always buzzing with activity as people shuttle wheelbarrows and buckets from pile to plant. With warmer weather, almost everyone is in short sleeves and sunglasses!
To me, stewardship means real care over time. We don’t just plant and walk away. We do what we can to make sure trees and native plants get established so that they do more than just survive. They thrive! To me there’s no better way to celebrate Earth Month and the end of the planting season than by taking care of these new plants.
Another way to celebrate: Help Friends of Trees meet our Earth Month goal! Your support is how we meet our planting goals for the year AND provide all the establishment care trees and plants need. Thank you!
Sometimes on Earth Day I like to take to the streets to see how people celebrate. A few years ago, I went to Pioneer Square, and it was so fun to see people’s faces light up when they saw an oak tree waving at them in downtown Portland! All the kids were especially psyched, and I just LOVE that.
Maybe they’re just excited about my winning smile, but I always say that once you love one tree, you love them all. And if you love trees, you love nature. Earth Month is really about making sure that the Earth is well taken care of for future generations. And getting those future generations involved is super duper important. That’s why we have education programs and workforce training and planting events that are all ages!
Last year, Earth Month was extra special because we planted our Millionth Tree! I’m still treasuring that day, when so many supporters showed up at the Friends of Trees office to celebrate our history and everything we’ve accomplished together. And now I have a new best bud, Silvie, the silverleaf oak that we planted as our millionth tree.
Silvie is one heck of a tree. They’re tough enough to deal with the traffic and the heat. They keep their leaves all year round so they never take a break from cleaning the air. (I personally prefer to drop my leaves, but hey, we’re all unique.) Despite their toughness, Silvie is a generous tree at heart, eager to provide shade on folks walking down the sidewalk.
When I think of Earth Month, and when I think of that silverleaf oak, I think of resilience. The Earth is resilient, and will outlast even the oldest oaks, but for now we’re striving to live in harmony with it. It’s all about taking care of each other.
Take care,
Garry
P.S. Read my whole diary here!
Garry Spreads the Seeds of Service for MLK Day
Dear Diary,
Volunteers are sort of like wildflowers. Each one is lovely and unique, but when you see a whole field of them, it’s totally, mind-blowingly beautiful. Seeing a huge group of volunteers together warms my heart on even the chilliest morning. And when they’re planting wildflowers? It can’t get any better than that.
Last weekend, I felt inspired to do something kinda wild myself. I went to three Friends of Trees planting events all in the same morning. This was an especially special morning, the weekend right before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The spirit of service really fills my canopy around MLK Day. Of course I love seeing volunteers almost every week at Friends of Trees planting events, but I really love that so many people are eager to make a difference in honor of Dr. King.
I started my morning in Forest Grove (what a great name for a town, right?) Volunteers gathered at Stites Nature Park to plant, you guessed it, wildflowers! I am a friend of native plants as much as I am a friend of trees, and our Green Space program gives me the perfect chance to hang out with some of my native plant buddies. We were planting red columbine, showy milkweed, Oregon iris, tiger lily, and more! The morning started off frosty, but the sun was out, shining on the volunteers and wildflowers that will bloom come spring. I literally cannot wait.
From there I went back home, to the Friends of Trees office, because we were staging an event there! Volunteers were planting in neighborhoods along the MLK corridor, perfect for this weekend of service. Our new partnership with the City of Portland is focused on planting trees to grow canopy where it’s needed most, in the most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods. So even though it’s winter now, we’re always thinking about those hot summer days and the shade trees can provide to the community. Volunteers can see their impact right away when they look at a tree they just planted, but that impact continues to grow and grow as the tree does.
It just feels so good to plant trees in my own neighborhood. Highly recommend if you get the chance. And City Councilor Elana Pirtle-Guiney agrees! We were stoked to have her at the event talking to our volunteers about why their work is so important.
“Look at the beautiful trees loaded up in these trucks,” Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said to the volunteers before they headed out to plant. “You’re going to some neighborhoods right near where I live, and there are blocks there that absolutely need these beautiful trees.”
We had some of our incredible community partners there too. The Blueprint Foundation and Wisdom of the Elders both brought crews. We also had a table set up for voter registration! One of the things I love about volunteers is that they are some of the most active citizens! Talk about wildflowers spreading seeds, am I right?
My last stop: more wildflowers. I popped over to the Columbia Slough Natural Area for the other Green Space event of the morning. I really love this place because it is a much needed slice of nature in the middle of an industrial area, right along the Columbia Slough, which is such an important waterway for my wildlife friends. Our friends from POIC were there leading crews, showing us what the next generation of environmental stewards is capable of.
I couldn’t help but bask in the good vibes of this place and the spirit of the people so committed to volunteering their time and energy to make our world a little bit better, one wildflower at a time.
Tree-mendously yours,
Garry
P.S. Read my whole diary here!
P.P.S. You can support these good vibes and good trees by donating!
Garry Shows Up Early in Vancouver
Dear Diary,
I showed up early to the Vancouver planting event last week. Like, really early, almost two hours before all the planting volunteers showed up! The sun had barely come up when I got to the church where the event was being staged. There were just a handful of Friends of Trees staff and a few staging volunteers in the parking lot, moving tools to parking spaces for each planting crew.
Then I met Adam. Adam was about to make my day. He’s a special volunteer, a “superstager.” When general volunteers show up on a Saturday morning, trees are already sorted by crew, ready to be loaded into a pickup truck and make their FINAL journey to their forever home. Adam knows this process like the back of his hand.
It turns out that sorting those trees is quite a task. You start with 80 trees, all sorts of different species. We were setting up for a dozen crews, and each one would plant about 7-10 trees at different homes in their assigned area. Of course, treecipients signed up to get a particular tree, so we had to make sure that the right trees went out with the right crews.
I’d ask Adam, “Where does this Golden rain tree belong?” “Crew J,” he’d respond after checking his clipboard. “J as in Joyful.”
“A is in Awesome.” “H as in Hippo.” “D as in Donut.” And on and on he went. Every time, Adam would come up with another random word. I started to try to come up with words too. It’s the perfect game for 7:30 A.M.
Rolling these trees to their dedicated parking spaces had me thinking about all the work that goes into preparing for an event. Outreach to community members about signing up for a tree, sourcing those trees from a local nursery, partner coordination, volunteer recruitment and communication, crew leader training. Even hole digging! And then there’s the physical logistics of getting all the tools, vehicles, trees, canopies, snacks, and most importantly, coffee—all to the same place at the same time. Wowee, it’s a lot!
When you think about it, it’s a bit of a miracle that we bring it all together. But it’s what Friends of Trees does best. We do it dozens of times a year. And it’s not a miracle when you think about all the people power behind the scenes that make it happen. So that when 100 volunteers show up at 8:45 A.M., it’s not long before they’re planting trees in the community. And after just a few hours, 80 new trees are in their new home soil.
Adela, the Neighborhood Trees Specialist leading this Central-South Vancouver event and famous from our social feeds, was all smiles as she welcomed the volunteers to the parking lot we prepared. “How many of you are here for your first ever Friends of Trees event?” she asked the crowd. About half the people cheered. I love to hear it.
We do it for the people who are joining us for the first time or the fiftieth time. For the people getting their first tree or their fifth. Saturday morning events don’t always run perfectly—how could they, with so many moving parts?—but they’re always meaningful and impactful
After we finished staging, I asked Adam over a donut and a coffee if he was headed home after he got such an early start.
“I’m going planting!” he said joyfully. “Me too!” I said.
Tree-mendously yours,
Garry
P.S. There are a bunch of different ways to volunteer besides planting! Stager, crew leader, summer inspector, and more. Learn more here.
P.P.S. You can support these good vibes and good trees by donating!
Garry Kicks Off The Planting Season!
Dear Diary,
The 37th planting season has started, can you believe it? I know that in Oregon white oak years, I’m just a kid. I’m only 37, and I could live to be 500! So this diary isn’t a mid-life crisis, or even a quarter-life crisis. I’ve just had some awesome experiences lately and want to write about them on paper and not just in my growth rings.
My leaves may be starting to turn and my friends are winding down toward winter dormancy, but I’m getting revved up for the Friends of Trees planting season. I went to my first event of the season last week and wow, the vibes were so good.
You know me, I’m a savanna kind of tree. But that’s what made going to Jackson Bottom Wetlands such a refreshing change of pace! This 635 acre wetland is really somethin’ special. So many birds were flying overhead! Our planting season kicks off there in October before the rains come. Turns out, wetlands can be pretty dry…until they aren’t.
But no muckboots were needed as 60 volunteers rolled in on that gorgeous Saturday morning. You know those crispy mornings when you can tell that the sun is going to come up warm and burn off the mist? It was one of those! Ugh, it just feels so good. I just love fall mornings like that.
Volunteers arrived with their families or friends or even by themselves, ready to feel good by doing good. We even had Hillsboro’s Japanese Community Day volunteers bring a group of 12 for their 27th year(!) working at Jackson Bottom. This is Friends of Trees’ 12th season at Jackson Bottom, and it is so exciting to see how much impact our volunteers have had. I love the crew huddle where we get to know each other. And stretch!
Oh yeah, I mentioned feeling good a couple times already. I should probably mention that that’s our theme this year:
FEEL GOOD. DO GOOD. PLANT TREES.
Makes sense right? People plant trees and native plants for so many reasons. To get outside, to make their communities greener, to provide bugs and critters with food and homes, to fight the big bad villain that is climate change. I think everyone does it because it feels good to do good.
There’s so much going on in the world. It can be rough, even for me, an Oregon white oak that is going to live for 500 years. So it’s nice to spend a Saturday morning meeting new people and planting a buttload of trees.
So that’s what we did! We planted 600 black cottonwoods! Populus trichocarpa are dear friends of mine, and I think they are gonna LOVE it on the forested edge of this wetland. Especially after being planted by people who care about trees, about community, and who make sure to take care of each other, too.
By midmorning, there were so many flannels and fleeces piled by the trail. It warmed up, just like I knew it would, and the sun shone on so many smiling faces. I just kept thinking, enjoy each moment, get to know each tree.
The season is just getting started! I may accidentally leave this diary somewhere someone might find it. That’s okay, this isn’t a secret diary. If you’re reading this, COME PLANT TREES WITH US. IT WILL FEEL AWESOME!
Tree-mendously yours,
Garry
P.S. Sign up to volunteer already!
P.P.S. You can support these good vibes and good trees by donating!
