Blooming trees beautify Rappahannock

Iam very pleased to announce that we were able to plant 365 blooming cherry, dogwood and redbud trees in Little Washington and Sperryville and environs this past month. You will remember that Lynda Webster of [Tiger Valley] offered us $5,000 to purchase the trees, and helped with our fundraising efforts. In the end we raised $7,000 which allowed us to reach some public spaces like the firehouse, the library, the county park and the visitor’s center.

Even though our town is small, it was still an effort to carry out all the recruitment and organization of the project with over 50 gardens involved. The mayor and town council were very supportive of the beautification efforts and offered us much assistance, like distributing our flyers and adoption forms to everyone on its email list, and in the monthly watering bills. After I sent the same materials to everyone on my personal email list, I started to go door to door to encourage people to sign up. Those efforts were very successful and much of the town is covered. We also held a “Planting Seminar” with experts telling us what we needed to know to keep the trees healthy. We distributed that planting directions paper several times to all recipients.

The local newspaper, Rappahannock News, was incredibly supportive of the project and ran story after story keeping people up with our progress, with great pictures. The Inn at Little Washington offered dinner for two for the first person who donated $5,000 to the project and the Three Blacksmiths restaurant in Sperryville offered two dinners for two to the first persons who donated $2,000.

Just as we were getting ready to plant this past fall, Ruth Welch, fellow member of the special projects committee, introduced us to Friends of the Rappahannock (FOR) based in Fredericksburg, which had a lot of money through donations and grants to plant thousands of trees in the counties that border the Rappahannock River. We contacted Bryan Hofmann who was thrilled to learn of our volunteer efforts and offered us, free of charge, all the trees we could use! That is when we grew the project to include Sperryville. Kerry Sutton and Kim Nelson were the coordinators there.

We started planting in March when the first paid order for 50 Yoshino trees arrived. Twenty-five of those trees went to Avon Hall in Little Washington, the most visible spot we could find (and the owner gave us a very generous donation). The rest we sold to garden club members at a very reasonable price. The Inn at Little Washington let us use their garden space to organize the drive and provided a special fertilizer for each tree.

In April we began in earnest with our planting efforts. Friends of the Rappahannock arrived at the Washington Firehouse on April 7 at 10:30 a.m. with two trucks full of trees. In the next few hours we went street by street, and house by house, dropping off the trees that the homeowners said they wanted. Again, the Inn let us use its space and provided logistical support to the effort, and more fertilizer!

The next two days saw Rito Garcia and his team from Garcia Landscaping Services on Route 211, with FOR’s support, get all the trees in the ground. Some areas, like the county park, which got 81 native trees, did its own planting with volunteer help. But the garden club paid to plant all of the trees in town, through the generous donations. Rito also planted the trees in Sperryville after Sperryfest was canceled due to the COVID-19 restrictions going into place and volunteers could not be used.

And the best news is that Friends of the Rappahannock wants to give us more trees! They want to plant trees in riparian barriers wherever streams or runs go across property in our area. They planted 24 trees in my neighbor’s yard the day after we finished with the trees in town! Just contact me and I will put you in touch with the folks at Friends of the Rappahannock.

I should also mention that another member of the special projects committee, Ann Stenner, worked with Shannon Grimsley and the STEM teacher at the elementary school to run a contest where the children made posters to answer the question, “Why are trees important?” Those efforts were halted by the COVID-19 shut down efforts but will renew in the fall. The kids all want those prizes!