Volunteer spirit takes root in tree program

Battery Park will become a little greener for the Christmas holiday -- and long afterward -- thanks to a group of volunteers with their hearts in Richmond's trees.

The Richmond Tree Stewards are donating six trees to plant in Battery Park on Dec. 12. A neighborhood group, Friends of Battery Park, is purchasing a seventh tree to plant in the North Side park, which has recovered from devastating floods caused by a collapsed sewer pipe during heavy rains three years ago.

The Tree Stewards also are buying seven trees to plant along an entrance to South Richmond. The trees will be planted in the median of the 4300 block of Iron Bridge Road to extend a row of crepe myrtle trees to the city line with Chesterfield County.

The trees are a tangible measure of the program's growth in a renaissance that began more than two years ago after several years of dormancy. They will be purchased with money raised by the Tree Stewards in their first Arbor Day program last spring.

"Seeing these trees in the ground is going to be very satisfying," said Suzette Lyon, a South Richmond resident who is president of the group's advisory panel.

Lyon has been a member of the program since 2004, when it was started by Richmond arborist Karl Pokorny and his wife, Rebecca. The group languished after the Porkonys left the Richmond area but was revived in 2007 by Norm Brown, a longtime city employee who had just joined the city's Urban Forestry Division.

"It's a good way to interact with the citizens and teach them about trees," Brown said.

Brown organized an advisory council for the program to ensure its long-term survival. While some localities require participants to be master gardeners, he said he designed Richmond's program to be more inclusive.

"It's mainly people who care about trees," he said.

Since its inception, 86 people have taken the 10-class program. If they have worked at least 20 community-service hours, certified tree stewards can help prune and plant trees on public property, as they did this past weekend in Chimborazo Park on Church Hill.

Richmond has offered the program four times since its revival in 2007. The city has scheduled a new round of classes to begin in February and end in April.

The surge in interest in the program coincides with an increase in public advocacy for greater attention to Richmond's aging urban forest. City Council recently created an Urban Forestry Commission, which will oversee city policy toward planting, maintaining, and removing trees and work with non-profit groups such as the Tree Stewards.

The stewards also serve as ambassadors for the city's urban forestry program, Brown said. "The main thing it's about is educating the citizens about trees."

Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or .