Green Horizons

Forest ReLeaf of Missouri celebrates 20 years of giving away trees

By Wendy Schlesigner

PHOTO COURTESY OF FOREST RELEAF

Volunteers at Forest ReLeaf go to the CommuniTree Gardens in Creve Coeur Park and help with weeding, potting, watering, tagging and loading trees during the spring and fall tree programs. They have distributed over 150,000 trees in 20 years.

For 20 years, Forest ReLeaf of Missouri distributed trees to parks, schools, churchs, neighborhood associations-anywhere- providing plantings take place on public or nonprofit land. Any day now, Forest ReLeaf will have distributed an astonishing 150,000 trees. To celebrate their history and record-breaking accomplishments, they threw an October fundraiser, "20 Years and Growing," which was attended by over 215 guests from all over the State of Missouri.

The occasion drew attention from both the City of St. Louis mayor's office and the St. Louis County Executive, each of whom presented Forest ReLeaf with a proclamation declaring a special Forest ReLeaf Day. Over $30,000 was raised at the event, which included a live band and a silent auction. On Oct. 26, Forest ReLeaf planted 20 trees in Creve Coeur Park adjacent to their CommuniTree Gardens Nursery, to honor the original founders of the organization. Dedicated as the "Founders' Forest," the area will celebrate both the vision and dedication of these people: Ted Allison, Rob Emmett, Mary Lou Green, Mark Greuber, Skip Kincaid, Jim Rocca, Mary Sherfy, Kent Theiling and Ray Wiesehan.

In recent years, the CommuniTree Gardens Nursery increased its capacity in many ways. In 2012, it was expanded to allow for an additional 5,000 trees. The total inventory is now around 20,000. The expansion was to attend to the growing need for trees after the EF-5 tornado in Joplin, Mo., that took out over 20,000 trees in May 2011.

This past spring saw a new milestone of potting up over 18,500 seedlings. The increase (up from 17,000 last year) is due largely to the ever-growing body of volunteers. Growing more seedlings leads to more available trees, which created another record this past fall of distributing over 10,000 free trees.

Caring for young trees and seedlings requires an experienced forester and a dedicated staff of volunteers. Operating under the direction of Mike Walsh, the organization's forestry programs manager, many of the regular CommuniTree Gardens Nursery volunteers are Master Gardeners or Master Naturalists. Several come with years of experience in construction, greenhouse management and other related interests. Given the expertise and enthusiasm of this cadre of volunteers, Forest ReLeaf is investigating additional expansion opportunities including a biodiversity greenhouse and enlargement of their 15-gallon pot-in-pot nursery section. If funding can be secured, these projects may be started in the very near future.