GREEN SPACES
Capital Roots, TD Bank partner to plant trees
WATERVLIET, N.Y. » Capital Roots, the Troy- based organization known best for its access to fresh food and green spaces, partnered with TDBank and the city to plant 50 trees on Thursday.
“This is a historical occasion,” Capital Roots CEO Amy Klein remarked.” It’s our first tree planting in Watervliet, and this year marks the 30th year of Capital Roots tree planting.”
The tree planting was funded by a grant from TD Bank’s Green Spaces project. It is part of the bank’s mission to plant over 1 million trees in North America by 2030. So far they are about halfway there. Only 20 grants for such projects were given out this year on the eastern border of the country, from Maine all the way down to Florida.
“It’s great that we work for a company that supports what we feel is important. Planting trees is so important,” commented Fran Yanulavich, TD Bank’s field marketing manager for upstate New York and Vermont.
This year’s tree planting was organized by Capital Roots’s healthy communities coordinator Calvin MacDowell. It is his first time in the role, succeeding program manager Sharon DiLorenzo who stepped down after 28 years of organizing tree plantings.
MacDowell came on board for tree planting while working on several healthy streets projects in Watervliet. He noticed that the city was working on a lot of “greening” projects, including forming a tree committee and taking an inventory of all the trees in the city. He knew he would get the support from the city that he needed to make tree planting in Watervliet possible.
“It’s definitely work that I seem myself continuing to do,” MacDowell said.
The tree planting project started at Pershing Green Memorial Park. Volunteers from Capital Roots and TD Bank, volunteer residents of the Watervliet tree com
mittee, and a few neighborhood residents gathered on a cold, rainy morning, determined not to let the weather stop their work.
Klein and TD Bank vice president & senior relationship manager Michael Wade thanked the volunteers for coming and spoke a little about the importance of what they were doing. Watervliet Mayor Michael Manning added his support to the project.
“It’s a great asset not only to Watervliet but also the Capital District to have a program like Capital Roots,” Manning said.
The mayor was then presented with two sign boards from the Department of Environmental Conservation, represented by Myra Fedyniak, for the city’s achievement of recertification as a bronze-level “climate-smart community.”
“Tree planting in urban areas is critical to mitigate climate change,” she said.
MacDowell then gave a demonstration of how to properly plant a bare-roots tree before the crowd was split into groups and got to work, spreading out across several other parks and residential areas in the city.
Capital Roots has used bare-roots trees for their planting projects for 25 years, since learning about the technology at Cornell University from Nina Bassuck, with the school’s Urban Horticulture Institute.
“Bare-roots trees are easier to move, and they’re a better product with a better root system,” Klein explained. “About 10 different species of trees were chosen for today, and each tree was specifically selected for the site it’s going to be planted at.
“We took into consideration things like height and hardiness for each site.”
Bare-roots trees can only be planted at this time of year, as the trees prepare to go into dormancy for the winter. Capital Roots employee Marissa Peck noted that over the years, the time frame for bare-roots planting has shifted several weeks later due to climate change. With the weather staying warmer longer, it delays when the trees begin their shift into dormancy.
Lois Gundrum, chairperson of the Watervliet tree committee and part of the volunteer residents along with brothers Paul and Bill Fahr, was happy to see and participate in the planting.
“I grew up in this city, and over the years we’ve lost more trees than we’ve gained. This is so important,” she said.
Gundrum noted that most of the trees lost in the city were due to human development, rather than natural causes. She also took a moment to explain how planting trees helps mitigate the “urban heat island effect.” This happens because cities have higher temperatures than their surrounding areas. Trees and other greenery have a cooling effect, providing shade and absorbing some pollution.
As Gundrum and her team of TD volunteers, guided by a Capital Roots “planting supervisor,” worked across Pershing Green, everyone was in a good mood.
“It’s fun. I never planted a bare-roots tree before,” Carol Heller said. “It’s fun to learn, and to help the environment.”
“I think this is fun,” agreed Eric Ryan. “It’s a great thing to be a part of.”