7th District Gets 22 Trees and a Garden, too!

It all started when Lendia Johnson, community outreach coordinator the Metropolitan Police Department's 7th District, noticed Casey Tree's Request for Planting Program and decided to take action.  She learned that any group with a minimum of 20 volunteers could apply to receive 10 trees - if they chip in to plant them and commit to watering them for their first two years.  Applicants are also told to start soliciting those volunteers, and don't forget to provide some refreshments.  Ms. Johnson did all that, attended an orientation at Casey (those folks have done this before!) and poof - all this happened.  Casey showed up with the trees, tools, and trained Citizen Foresters acting as technical advisors to direct the volunteers, led by Otis Marachaux.  (Application deadlines are June 15 and November 30 of each year.) 

Here's something that may not be well known.  Unlike Casey's earlier focus on street trees, this program is available to public and private spaces anywhere in the city - even residential back yards.  If, like most back yards, yours can't hold 10 new trees, you and your neighbors can pool together to create the needed volunteers and tree sites.  It's all about restoring D.C.'s tree canopy, not so much about who "owns" each tree.  In a sense we all own them, don't we?

Next, the D.C. Urban Gardeners were asked to design and create a greener, more welcoming front yard for the station.  Professional gardener Teresa Ahmann volunteered her time as the garden designer, and the garden installation was planned by Teresa and another Urban Gardener, Mary Blakeslee.  Their work included using a "Wish List" to cajole donated plants for the garden, gathering and transporting them to the site, then directing the all-in-one-day sometimes-chaotic event.

Casey Trees selected for the site 15 crape myrtles - white-flowering interspersed with their purple- flowering cousins; also one Chinese fringetree and three white fringetrees and three magnolias for a grand total of 22 trees all together.  Oh, and they threw a pallet or two of soil amendment and mulch on the truck, too. 

THE VOLUNTEERS
A total of 60 or more volunteers were on site during the day for the tree-planting alone, under the direction of Casey Trees, and dozens more arrived for the installation of the new 7D Garden, under the direction the D.C Urban Gardeners.  If I've missed anyone, let me know:

• Court Services and Offenders Supervisory Agency and Hope Village Halfway House participants planted trees for community service credits.  (And expressing unbridled enthusiasm for planting trees on a beautiful day over serving that jail time.)
• D.C. Association of Retarded Citizens
• U.MD student Ali Ibrahim heard about the event from his teacher of Environmental Science, who requires 10 hours of community service for a passing grade. (Great idea!)  This future accountant loved being part of this project and wondered aloud why he was the only volunteer from his class. (So Ali, spread the word.    
• Guys from the Covenant House Washington's Fatherhood Matters program spread the word with their white shirts emblazoned declaring "Fatherhood Matters."
• 7D's Citizens Advisory Council and the Calvin Woodland Foundation, a mentoring program that supports youth programs, supplied the food and performed the grilling of hot dogs.
• 5th Graders from close neighbor Garfield Elementary School planted shrubs and flowers, then spread mulch and watered.  They told us they'll be stopping by this summer to see the results of their good work.
• The entire corps of D.C. Urban Gardeners - to a gardener! - was there, and we they have the aching muscles to prove it. 

WHAT A DAY

Lucky for all of us, it was a real spring day, not like the frigid ones of only a week earlier, and a perfect day for gardening.  So between the police coming and going, the offenders, the neighbors, the kids and gardening enthusiasts all working together as a team - well, it just doesn't get any better than that. 

PHOTOS:  Top right, Lendia Johnson with  citizen forester Grace E. Daughtridge; bottom right, the author with her gardening partner (Send me your name!); and lower left, these Garfield kids work hard!!  Gotta a photo to add to this story?  Write me and I'll include it.

Posted by Susan Harris