Free Trees

“Free trees!”proclaimed the flyer. In an effort to increase the arboreal canopy of Tacoma, the city was offering trees, free of charge, to residents who agreed to plant them in their parking strips or, as the flyer called them, planting strips.  

To get the free trees a resident needed the agreement of a handful of residents on the block. Once given, the block could pick from a wide range of acceptable trees to receive, plant and care for.

I looked down our street and imagined parallel rows of towering hardwoods with branches meeting twenty or thirty feet off the ground to form a celestial arch of awe. It was a grand idea and I was hooked.  

By the end of the weekend I had the signatures of five neighbors -- not as many as I’d hoped for, but more than enough to complete the paperwork and request the trees.  

We selected fifteen Carolina Silver Bells and one Spanish Cork Tree. I’d never heard of either, but the southerner in me was a sucker for something from the Carolinas, while the homebrewer was sure I could find some use for a tree that literally grew cork as bark.   

The trees arrived one winter day, and a team of neighbors gathered on the following Saturday morning with picks and shovels.

Old and young, male and female, able and disabled joined in the work party. Folks like me who were prone to proclaim the hole “big enough” learned to negotiate with neighbors like Jeremy who consistently claimed the hole “should be bigger.”

Bit by bit, hole by hole, negotiation by negotiation, we made our way around the block shoveling dirt, cursing at rocks, unbinding roots and nestling trees into their new, generational homes.

By mid afternoon every leafless tree was in place and we paused to admire the symmetrical rows and impeccable spacing. All we had to do now was wait ten to twenty years.

Wait and, oh yes, water. It’s the northwest, the skies would provide all the water we’d need, right?  

The Cork Tree was the first to go. It probably never had a chance. It was twelve feet tall, so the first wind storm blew it down like a house made of sticks.

 But our hopes were buoyed a few months later by blooming Silverbells. They really were pretty. Then summer brought the heat and sent the neighbors on vacation.  Watering stalled and leaves shriveled.

By the time we figured out what was happening it was too late for half the trees.  The city dropped off five gallon watering buckets with tiny holes. This helped, but not enough.

After the second summer only three trees survived.

And now? As I type, I’m looking out my window at the lone surviving Silverbell.  She is frail, stunted, and lonely, but alive, the sole survivor.

By almost all accounts our communal efforts failed. We batted 1 for 15 on tree planting, an average not even good enough for the 2017 Mariners.

Promotional flyers don’t tell you what most community organizers will. Most projects fail, but sometimes you get something for your efforts even better than the original goal.    

I had mostly forgotten about our tree adventure until Memorial Day weekend when we went camping with some friends we’ve known for over a decade. Sitting around the campfire brought up old stories.

“Remember when we planted those trees on the block?”  “Yeah,” I replied, “all but one died.”

Jeremy chuckled, “I told you we should have made the holes bigger.”