50,000 Trees: Local Reforestation is Quietly Changing Your Life

50,000 Trees: Local Reforestation is Quietly Changing Your Life

Woman and child at a tree planting

As the leaves start to explode in the fiery colors of fall, we each tend to find ourselves in awe of the beautiful forests we see every day. Maybe we wonder what sort of trees follow us on our way to work. Between goals at our kids’ soccer games we try to guess the source of the little leaf blanket on the ground. On hikes we gaze up at the lumbering giants and try to imagine how many winters and springs they have seen.  

The Glory of Leaf Peeping

If you live in the Brandywine Valley or visit it, especially during the gorgeous onset of fall, you probably already have an appreciation for the beautifully preserved natural allure of the area. Whether you canoe down the Brandywine every summer weekend or ride horses year-round, you know that this is a special place, a valley protected by many hands in an effort to keep it so lovely and largely unchanged. Or so you think.

Quietly Changing Everything You Love

Over the past six years the Brandywine Conservancy and its partners have worked vigorously to make huge changes to those very sacred natural places you love to visit. In line with our mission to maintain and preserve this land, for the past-half decade the Conservancy has been digging holes, driving trucks and stomping around local protected lands in the hope of changing your life for the better– one tiny tree at a time.

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Smiling girl planting trees
50,000 Trees

As of today, the Brandywine Conservancy is two-thirds of the way to its goal to plant 50,000 trees in the Brandywine Watershed by its 50th anniversary in 2017. At the end of the fall 2015 planting season, with the hard work and help of hundreds of community-minded volunteers, more than 36,000 trees will have been planted (since 2009) as a part of our reforestation efforts.

Each Mighty Little Tree

Each tiny tree we help find a home on protected lands is a commitment to enriching the lives of those who live here. Each tree will improve your drinking water by promoting rainwater absorption, replenishing groundwater supplies, and reducing stormwater runoff. While you’re eating breakfast each day, those trees are already hard at work preventing erosion in your favorite streams, providing shade to cool local creeks, and ensuring canoeing, horseback riding, and hiking will still be possible when your children have children of their own. Loving the land means active stewardship; for us, the simple action of planting trees ensures clean drinking water, a home for wildlife, and a place to walk in the woods with our grandchildren.

So Where Are All These Baby Trees

The short answer: everywhere. The trees have been planted from Chester and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania, throughout the headwaters of the Brandywine Watershed (where our beloved Brandywine River begins). The Brandywine Conservancy and a small army of happy volunteers have planted in and on:

  • Riparian buffers (lands on either side of a stream)
  • Steep slopes (great than 15%)
  • Wetland areas
  • Headwaters
  • Greenway corridors
  • Lands adjacent to existing forests
  • Urban settings, such as Coatesville and Avondale.

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Group at a tree planting
Come Meet Our Baby Trees and Help Them Find a Home

In just a few weeks we have our fall tree planting – on November 7th – where you and your family can come meet the new crop of baby trees and help them find a place to live. Our Conservancy staff has carefully chosen a location where the trees will make a huge impact and would love you to join us to put these future lumbering giants into the ground. That way, next autumn when you’re wondering where all the falling leaves are coming from and who put those amazing trees there you’ll know the answer – you did.

For more information about the planting or to sign up please contact Meredith Mayer at 610.388.8351 or email [email protected].