Seasonal Stakeout
Upstate’s Community Tree Planting Movement (and How to Join It) by Michelle Sutton
W
hen you read about ambitious and successful volunteer tree planting collaborations in upstate New York, Ed Dore wants you to say not, “Isn’t that great they do that?” but rather, “Hey, we can do this here, too!” Dore owns Dore Landscape Associates, founded in 1982, in Pendleton, about half an hour northeast of Buffalo and one mile east of the Erie Canal. Though he eschews recognition, Ed Dore is highly regarded for his talent in helping volunteer communities of all kinds to work in partnership with one another to plant trees in public spaces. He and his industry colleagues have been involved in community tree planting efforts in earnest since 1999, but Dore tracks the movement back to 1974 when the Western NY State Nursery and Landscape Association (WNYSNLA) planted its first Arbor Day tree. The inaugural tree was planted on Goat Island in the Niagara River, near Niagara Falls.
Envisioning at the Millenium
RIGHT: Buffalo's west side community tree farm LEFT: Mulching McKinley Parkway in May (Neil Stern) 12 | JULY-AUGUST 2013
In 1999, the NYS Nursery and Landscape Association (NYSNLA) executive committee—then made up of Dore, Greg Frank of Rochester, Dave Ryan of Syracuse, and Vinnie Drzewucki of Long Island— decided to create a program to plant 2000 trees across the state. They wanted to both commemorate the new millennium and to more generally promote the idea of using trees as an iconic symbol for honoring events. With funding for the trees coming from Niagara Mohawk and HSBC, and labor offered pro bono by
its members, the NYSNLA launched the 2000Tree Program. Dore says, “In the first week of January, 2000, NYSNLA members planted 100 trees along the waterways of NYS, starting with trees planted on Goat Island, and each day we moved east to the Hudson River, and then south along the Hudson. It worked out nicely that we embarked on our one-year goal by setting out from Goat Island, where 26 years earlier we’d planted our first Arbor Day tree.” Later in 2000, the WNYSNLA found funds to match earmarks from the 2000Tree Program to make it possible to plant 900 B&B (balled-and-burlapped) trees in Buffalo’s Delaware Park in partnership with the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy. (Frederick Law Olmsted was the legendary American landscape architect who designed the city’s park system.) At the same time, tractor trailer loads of different species of trees for the 2000Tree Program were delivered to Dore’s business. His sons Andrew, Matthew, and Danny would unload the trees, sort them to fulfill requests from various NYSNLA Regions, reload the trees on trailers, and send them across the state. NYSNLA members organized volunteers or installed the trees themselves and in some cases, the Dore boys would travel to various locations to assist in the effort. “The idea was to use these trees as a way to get involved in community groups already working to beautify their neighborhoods,” Dore says. “NYSNLA got funding to continue into 2001, and with volunteers, we planted about 1800 trees by September of 2001.” The