Lakewood Loves Trees UPDATE: SORRY, SOLD OUT
[UPDATE 3/3/23] Lakewood apparently loves trees too much… they sold out early on the first day. This article is also about volunteer help, and an educational workshop for residents who bought trees. If that’s you, skip down to the bottom of the article.
[ORIGINAL POST] What’s a park without a tree? Let’s not go there. Lakewood is blessed with fertile and welcoming soil, a beautiful climate, and lots of trees. Tree-lined streets are plentiful in our suburban area, and generations of memories have grown from kids’ tree houses, kids worrying their moms with tree-limb acrobatics, and backyard swings under leafy canopies.
The City of Lakewood is big on parks and outdoor recreation. With 113 parks and 240 miles of trails, we have over 7,400 acres dedicated to parks and open space. That’s over one fourth of the city’s total area. Most of us are familiar with parks near where we live, but the list of choices for enjoying public park space is so much wider than we could take in without making it a serious pursuit. Fortunately Lakewood has a whole group of people whose work is just that serious pursuit, on our behalf, caring for and maintaining our parks so we can enjoy them: the Lakewood Department of Parks, Forestry and Open Space.
Not Just the Parks…
… but trees in our yards have important benefits that come together across our lot lines and add up to a better neighborhood and a better world. They improve the air quality, absorbing pollutants and harmful gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. They reduce the amount of heat absorbed by our concrete and asphalt. They cut down on ambient noise, absorb and filter stormwater runoff, and provide habitat and food for a variety of wildlife, including birds, insects, and small mammals. And they look good. To a large degree, well beyond where we are now, you just about can’t have too many trees. Almost everywhere around us, when it comes to trees, more is better.
Opportunity Knocks: Lakewood Tree Sale
Buying and planting trees can be expensive. We are happy to announce a new program from the City of Lakewood Department of Parks, Forestry and Open Space, offering trees which could otherwise cost hundreds of dollars… for $25.00. Trees can be ordered online during the month of March. Pickup will be one day only, April 15 at the Lakewood Greenhouse. Ten varieties of trees will be available. There are resources on the Lakewood website to teach you about choosing the right variety for your home, and about planting and care of the trees. And – this is big – for Southern Gables residents, Sustainable Southern Gables stands ready to help.
Sustainable Southern Gables
Sustainable Southern Gables will offer a workshop on tree planting and care at the Gables School/Community Garden at Green Gables Elementary. In addition, they will provide volunteers to help Southern Gables residents in ordering the best tree species for your home and in transporting and planting the trees bought through this program. We’ll help as many people as we can based on the number of volunteers that we have. Please email [email protected] to sign up for assistance. And speaking of volunteers, if you’d like to help out on April 15 with picking up and helping plant the new trees in our neighborhood, let us know at that same email address. The more helpers we have, the more trees we can plant.
Details
Read all about it here: Lakewood Tree Sale. You will also be able to order from that website, or by phone at the number shown there, on or after March 1, 2023.
