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North Carolina Plants Trees for Wildlife
When National Wildlife Federation offered affiliates, such as the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, FREE native trees right before the busy Earth Day month of April, I ordered one thousand, optimistic that I could find homes for them considering we had over 10 Earth Day events as well as school and community projects coming up. I ordered 250 each of wild black cherry, white flowering dogwood, white oak, and eastern redbud.
Gathering my optimism, I opened the boxed, organized them into bunches and put my plan into motion. NWF already provided us with the planting instructions and pledge forms (when people sign a pledge form, they are more likely to actually plant the tree and take care of it). So, we began to create information sheets for each tree and laminated pictures of the trees to show folks what they would look like fully grown.
The trees we received arrived as young seedlings, ranging in size from 2 to 5 feet tall. Their size made transporting them easier, but did not set the most appealing stage for volunteers to agree to plant them and water them over the summer. We had several different responses such as “I will never live long enough to enjoy it” and “How big will this little guy get?”.
At the celebration of Charlotte becoming a Certified Community Wildlife Habitat, one of our last events, we were giving away trees left and right.
This had a huge impact for those involved and for the local environment and wildlife. We look forward to participating in more tree plantings!
Help NWF affiliates, communities, and wildlife continue receiving free native tree seedlings by sponsoring a tree or purchasing holiday cards from NWF’s catalog!
About the Author: Christopher North is the Conservation Coordinator at the North Carolina Wildlife Federation.