Sunday, April 19, 2009

Pittsburgh Tree Plantings

Staking A Claim For
Our Pittsburgh Forest


The past couple weeks my nephew James Sichak and I volunteered with a number of local groups to help reforest our Urban environment with trees to enhance our communities.
We helped the Wilkinsburg Shade Tree Commission relocate 23 trees from a community nursery to homes throughout their neighborhoods a couple weeks ago.


We turned out with a
number of community groups including East Liberty Development, and Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest(FPUF) and about a hundred volunteers from various community organizations in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh to plant trees on East Liberty Boulevard.



Then, this past
weekend for Earth Day we joined again with FPUF and this time we worked together with Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Tree Vitalize, and Friends of The Waterfront . Our gratitude and humble thanks to corporate Sponsor Keen Shoes and the around 300 volunteers helping with planting trees along the South Side Trail bike trail. People were planting trees, perennials and bulbs along sections of the trail. There were over a 115 native trees planted today just along the trail... from river birches to American elms, magnolias to oaks... we planted trees! FPUF had two other plantings coinciding this planting, in the Morningside and Lawrenceville neighborhoods today as well. Awesome work FPUF!!
We had the tremendous opportunity at Urban Tree Forge to work with a a few of our community groups to provide tree stakes for their planting endeavors. This year we decided to take the opportunity to stencil our web address onto our stakes so we can get the word out about our efforts to utilize our local tree removals for projects and people within our urban setting. We were fortunate to be afforded the opportunity to provide tree stakes for Wilkinsburg borough tree plantings, for the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association, and for Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Some of our stakes were used for the tree plantings in the Lawrenceville and the Morningside neighborhoods, and for the East Liberty plantings a couple weeks back. Thank you for the opportunity to make a difference in our great city everyone...


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