Tag: volunteers
Planting a Therapeutic Native Meadow
Even in slushy conditions, volunteers showed up to Bybee Lakes Hope Center with inspiring attitudes
On Saturday February 15th, an inch of snow still covered the VetREST Victory Garden at the Bybee Lakes Hope Center. When it started raining, it seemed like one of those mornings when folks might decide to stay home, and who could blame them. Luckily the roads were clean and volunteers slowly but surely arrived, proving their commitment to planting native plants in a meadow once intended to be a prison yard.
The Bybee Lakes Hope Center building was originally meant to be a correctional facility, but that never came to be. Now it serves as a transitional housing facility in North Portland supporting people experiencing homelessness. Outside, there’s a five-acre Victory Garden run by VetREST. VetRESt helps military veterans address their challenges with a goal of finding peace from their hidden battles, providing farming and gardening opportunities and mentorship.
The five-acre Victory Garden has a young fruit orchard, a thriving vegetable garden, and a walking path with trees planted by Friends of Trees in 2021. On that Saturday in February, dozens and dozens of volunteers showed up to plant more than 800 native pollinator plants among the trees planted three years ago.
“Without that planting three years ago, we might not have this garden,” says Ron White of VetREST.
Volunteers spread compost on the sandy soil to give the plants nutrients. Steaming wheelbarrows crisscrossed the meadow, weaving between pods of plants and snowpeople constructed by some of the younger volunteers. The rain let up by midmorning and volunteers shed layers. Spirits were high and smiles abounded as the meadow gained plants one by one.
By the time we finished, enough snow had melted to reveal the mulch path that weaves through the meadow to the orchard, and it became easy to imagine taking a peaceful spring stroll among the milkweed, goldenrod, and Oregon grape.
“It’s a testament to the volunteers. The actions of folks like this are really making a difference to transform this into an amazing space,” Ron says. “This is the essence of a community garden.”
Creating Inclusive Planting Events in NE Portland
With Verde, Friends of Trees put on its first Spanish-language led event
While planting trees at a home on Going Street in Northeast Portland, Bella reminded her mother Maria that she wanted to speak Spanish for the entire event. Her mom smiled, and continued her question to Crew Leader Ana in Spanish. Everyone on this particular crew was bilingual, but they embraced the spirit of the event and led with Spanish.
While Friends of Trees has had Spanish-led crews at past events, this planting was the first ever event to be led in Spanish. Friends of Trees partnered with Verde to plan the event and recruit volunteers.
“It was our first ever opening announcements in Spanish, our first Crew Leader huddle in Spanish,” said Neighborhood Trees Senior Specialist Andrew Land, the planting lead for the event and one of the several Friends of Trees staff who speaks Spanish.
The event’s Crew Leaders were all Líderes Verdes, a Verde program supporting the leadership development of Cully’s Latine community. Crew Leaders like Ana organized planters, distributed tools, and demonstrated planting techniques entirely in Spanish.
“We get a lot of people at our events who are bilingual, but I love that we flipped it on its head and led with Spanish,” Andrew said. “It allows us to put Spanish speakers squarely in their comfort zone.”
When a crew showed up to plant at a tree recipient’s home near Fernhill Park, the homeowner happily dusted off her Spanish skills to talk with the crew.
The event was smaller and more intimate than most of our neighborhood plantings, but it still made for a lively and productive morning. Four crews planted 32 trees, and celebrated over a pozole lunch.
“We wanted to keep it small to make sure it went smoothly,” Andrew said. “It went great, and hopefully this is the first of many Spanish events.”
This planting is part of the Clean Air Canopy project. When a NE Portland glass plant reached a settlement with Oregon DEQ related to compliance with their air quality permit, a portion of the penalty contributed funds to approved local environmental projects, including planting trees. Friends of Trees, with partners Verde, Cully Association of Neighbors, and Cully Air Action Team, have focused on making sure these plantings are beneficial and inclusive to the communities they serve.
Training available for key volunteer positions with the Tree Team!
Help us get ready for our 33rd season of planting and caring for trees!
We have training opportunities for key volunteer positions, no experience necessary:
Pruning training sessions – learn to prune!
- Oregon City, 9/25, 9am-12pm: The training is designed for OC residents, but all are welcome
- Wilsonville, 10/2, 9am-12pm: The training is designed for Wilsonville residents, but all are welcome
Remember back in February when the massive ice storm left so much tree destruction in its wake? Did you know that proper structural pruning when a tree is young is a tool you can use to help mitigate major tree failures from wind and ice storms?
Thanks to funding through the City of Oregon City and the Oregon City Community Enhancement Grant, FOT is offering a free, young-tree structural pruning workshop! This workshop will teach you how to identify pruning needs, how and when to prune trees, how to use different tools (no chainsaws!), and more.
How do I register? Visit our online calendar, click on the event, and fill out the quick registration form to reserve your place. Space is limited.
What will the training be like? Participants will learn from and practice alongside FOT staff and experienced FOT pruning volunteers as they prune young trees. Participants will also receive educational materials that provide more information on basic pruning techniques, how structural pruning can be used to improve tree resiliency, and the importance of young tree care and a healthy urban forest.
What about Covid-19? Friends of Trees continues to take safety very seriously and are using the following precautions at this time:
- All volunteers are required to be fully-vaccinated against Covid-19, and willing to show proof at their event if asked. OR are not eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine at the time of their event (e.g. due to being under 12 years old, or severely immunocompromised).
- All volunteers and staff wear a properly fitted mask to the event and through event introductions. After crews split off and are more spread out pruning, those who prefer are welcome to remove their masks as long as they can remain 6’+ apart.
- If you feel unwell within 2 weeks of the event, please cancel your volunteer registration.
- Please bring your own food and snacks, there will likely not be any shared food or drinks provided by FOT, we hope to return to shared coffee and breakfast snacks as soon as it is safer to do so!
- FOT is committed to limiting the risk of exposure for our volunteers and staff in every possible way while continuing to prune, plant, and bring people together safely outdoors. For a full list of our Covid-19 protocol, please see our Volunteer FAQ page.
Crew Leader Training – lead teams of tree planters!
If you are looking for a way to combat climate change and create a more equitable community, you might just be a future Friends of Trees Crew Leader!
If you want to lead the public to plant trees in parks and neighborhoods that don’t have as many, you might be a future Friends of Trees Crew Leader!
If you want to make a lasting, positive change in a fun and physical(ly-distanced) way and you don’t mind working in the mud and rain, then you might be ready to become a Friends of Trees Crew Leader!
And we hope you do — all are welcome!
Visit our Crew Leader training webpage to see your online and in-person training options. Space is limited, register soon to hold your spot at one of these fun Fall trainings!
Volunteer Spotlight
An incredibly challenging planting season has come to a close and we are indebted to many people who went above and beyond to help make sure 21,000 trees + native shrubs were planted. We’ll be highlighting a few of these folks over the coming months, volunteers who really made a difference, despite the obstacles.
Meet Mallory Pratt!
Mallory (she/her) started volunteering back in 2013. Ever since she’s been a powerhouse planting, pruning, summer inspecting where it’s most needed. When it comes to community tree work Mallory does it all! In her own words:
I love trees and Friends of Trees is an amazing organization that puts science and civics and people and fun all together to give our urban landscape more of them! How could I not volunteer?
C19 reminded me that the people part is just as important as the tree part! Not just cause it’s harder to plant a tree by yourself, but because sharing tree love with others and learning together is so much fun:) That and I soooo miss the lunch potluck.
Do you have any memories of the 20-21 planting season that stand out?
Digging through Missoula-flood-soil to make the right size hole for a surprisingly big native oak by myself.
The joy of having an Assistant Crew Leader to work with in February!!
Not loading and unloading trees from trucks:) Thank you Friends of Trees staff who did so much heavy lifting and coordination of that!!!!
Connecting with homeowners desperate to talk to someone they don’t live with:)
What advice do you have for other Crew Leaders? Share what you’ve learned and learn from others. Smile a lot.
Planting manager Ian Bonham shares a few words about Mallory : Mallory’s been planting with FOT longer than I have, but it wasn’t until this season that we finally got to have a bit of one-on-one time. There was this week in January where I kept running into Mallory at the FOT house when she was picking up tools and maps to plant or prune a route of trees. We had a few long conversations in the FOT parking lot, joking about our muddy masks, hunting for public restrooms, and the peculiarities of planting trees in a pandemic. I literally screeched with laughter a few times and she really lifted my spirits during a pretty dark time. Several weeks later I got repeated requests from volunteers who wanted to be on her planting crews—I can totally understand why. Mallory clearly finds real joy in doing good work for and with her neighbors, and she does a great job of sharing it too.
Mallory, thank you for buoying this work the last 8+ years, but particularly during these pandemic daze! You have a big heart, and like Ian (kinda) said, your joy is a contagion that we wanna catch!!
Tis the season … for Give!Guide
The 2020 Give!Guide is here!
Willamette Week’s Give!Guide runs through December 31st and is a great way to learn about organizations that are doing amazing work on behalf of people, places, critters and causes (including trees + community, of course ;).
G!G features Big Give Days when donors are entered to win fabulous incentives like shopping sprees, vacation packages, and more.
Why give? Now more than ever, we need trees! They fight climate change, clean our air and water, and make this place beautiful. And when planted the Friends of Trees way, with all kinds of volunteers, trees grow community (ands we need that more than ever, too!).