Rainwater key to Trees for Houston’s sapling success
Volunteers from renewable power supplier Green Mountain Energy flooded the new Garden Oaks campus of nonprofit Trees for Houston on Tuesday, plunging narrow shovels into the soft earth to plant rows of Mountain Laurels and Southern Magnolias in honor of Earth Month before tending to the tree nursery.
Underground, an irrigation system pulling captured rainwater from a 6,000-gallon cistern lay in wait, ready to keep the young trees alive. The shiny metal tank is an unusual beacon even along the mixed-use thoroughfare of West 34th. It is expected to repurpose 40,000 gallons of rainwater per year. The system has already saved thousands of dollars from the organization’s water bills since it was installed during last summer’s drought.
“In Houston we get a similar amount of precipitation as somewhere like Portland, Ore., which people think of as this wet, wet, wet place,” said Barry Ward, executive director of the 40-year-old nonprofit Trees for Houston. He said the difference is that Houston’s comes in peaks and valleys: all at once, or not at all.
That dynamic is especially important for his organization, which has planted over half a million trees across the Houston area and wants to see them survive the dry spells.
“If you take two trees, and you put one on rainwater, and you put one on city water, the one on rainwater grows faster,” Ward said. “You’ll get a 20% increase in growth rate when they’re little.”
The tank system is among the facility’s improvements sponsored by NRG-owned Green Mountain Energy’s charitable arm, Sun Club, alongside a rooftop solar array.
Volunteer Matt Dockendorf, a marketing manager by day, had before only planted trees in his yard. After volunteering, he pocketed a pile of advice for next time.
“They said I need to make my holes bigger when I dig,” he said, “and to leave the top part of the tree (roots) exposed when you put the tree in. I always just cover it all back up.”
Johnny Richardson, the Sun Club’s program manager, said they try to invest in sustainable longterm solutions for local groups, things that will save money and natural resources down the line. He said the solar panels they installed onsite last summer have saved 1,000 trees’ worth of carbon dioxide emissions, and the water capture should be increasingly helpful as April and May rains hit.
“We’ll get a hurricane and then it won’t rain for two months, and then we’ll get a crazy flood and then it won’t rain for two months. So if we can think of ways to harvest that potential, then it helps curb all of those issues that we have whenever there’s feast and famine,” Richardson said.