The Savannah Tree Foundation is happy to announce the availability of a small revolving fund called the CommuniTrees Fund, dedicated to helping community organizations purchase and plant canopy trees.

“Our new CommuniTrees fund helps answer the need for smaller tree plantings than we can typically accommodate,” stated Diane Houston, President of the Savannah Tree Foundation.  Savannah Tree Foundation usually plants 50 or more trees per tree planting because the amount of planning required to carry out a large scale tree planting is relatively the same, whether planting 50 or 250 trees.

“We often get requests for one or two trees, sometimes four or five or ten trees, and this program was created for that reason,” said Houston.

The program commences in the Fall of 2010 with seed money from the Trustees Garden Club, and is replenished with donated funds given through Savannah Tree Foundation’s Holiday Plant a Tree program, which enables individuals and businesses to plant gift trees in honor of or in memory of someone special or to commemorate a special occasion. 

The purpose of this program is to assist non-profit groups, neighborhood associations and other community organizations with small tree planting requests of 1-10 trees, on property that is held in trust for public use.  

Program requirements include:

•   Securing and documenting permission of property owners to plant trees on property.
•   Provide a donation to STF toward the cost of trees.  There is no minimum donation required.
•   Pick up trees at a community volunteer tree plantings and participate in the tree planting if possible, to learn first hand how best to plant a tree.
•   Plant the trees during tree planting season, which runs from November to  February/March.
•   Commit to watering and maintaining trees for 2 years.

Savannah Tree Foundation provides 15 gallon trees plus advice on siting trees, selecting species appropriate to a site, tree planting techniques, and ongoing maintenance.  Guidelines and application forms are available online or by calling  912-233-TREE. 

We’ve developed quite an awesome website with the assistance of great folks from Southpoint Media, Brad Morrison and Lucas Karpiuk, along with Ariel Janzen of Bright White Space.  They were a pleasure to work with and have been patient, easygoing and delightful partners in this process. Special appreciation also goes out to the Georgia Forestry Commission, which funded the website through its Urban & Community Forestry grant program.

Here you’ll find out what we’re up to, the latest and greatest information on trees in Savannah, and all the best of what we have to share. I hope you make regular visits and subscribe to our blog. If you have ideas or suggestions to improve the website or run across any bugs that need fixin’, kindly let us know. We’ve tested and re-tested everything for a pleasurable visitor experience, but in the off-chance we missed something … please let us know!