Today’s guest post is by Karen Zumach, Community Forestry Manager at Tree Trust, based in St. Louis Park. 

When I’m not busy planning to plant trees, thinking about planting trees, watering trees and pruning trees, I try to figure out ways to plant more trees.  Each year we facilitate the planting and/or distribution of nearly 3,000 trees.  We can’t do it alone…wanna help?

Trees.  We all love them.  They do so many wonderful things for us.  Trees clean the air, provide homes to animals, keep us cool in the summer and mitigate the urban heat island effect, absorb carbon dioxide, mitigate stormwater runoff which helps to keep our water clean and of course, provide oxygen to breathe.  I guess the question is, what can’t trees do?

I’ll tell you what they can’t do.  They can’t always defend themselves from the indefensible, things like:  storms and invasive pests.  We lose so many mature “work horse” trees each year it’s hard to keep up.  Thankfully the City of Minneapolis makes it super easy for residents to increase the tree canopy by providing 1,000 trees to residents for the low low cost of $25.  In order for us to make sure we have the maximum amount of money available for trees we look for volunteers to help participating residents load up their trees and send them on their way.

This is where you come in.  Next Saturday, May 18^th and Sunday, May 19^th, we will be sending 1,000 trees home to happy residents.  We can’t do it alone.  We need you!  The task is simple, put a smile on your face, make a new friend, and team lift a 6-8’ tree into a vehicle.  It’s a great exercise for both body and mind, as some space management skills will be required.  We have shifts available from 6:45 to 11:15 am and 11:00 am until 4:00 pm on Saturday the 18^th and 7:45-12:15 pm and 12:00 until 4:00 on Sunday the 19^th.  We’ll feed, water and coffee you and you’ll feel really great about helping increase the city of Minneapolis’ tree canopy by 1,000 trees.  Are you in?

Please contact me, Karen Zumach at karenz@treetrust.org to sign up or for more information.