PENDLETON — “This is where I start to cry — people are nice!” Carrie Tauscher said out loud as volunteers streamed into the parking lot at Falls Park Office on Saturday for a day of planting trees in Pendleton.
Tauscher, urban forestry coordinator for Indiana Department of Natural Resources, has worked for months with the Town of Pendleton and several local organizations, including South Madison Community Foundation, to help plan the effort. It all came together under sunny skies.
In the end, more than 150 volunteers from town and beyond came out to help plant more than 300 trees — 200 at local residences and more than 100 in the park.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“I thought it went really, really well,” Pendleton Planning Director Rachel Christenson said. “For as many trees as we were planting and the number of volunteers we had, I think it went off without a hitch.
“I was really excited about the event and how it turned out, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather.”
Pendleton received a $15,800 Arbor Day Foundation’s Community Tree Recovery Program grant to fund the project, which was designed to help replace some of the 500 trees lost in Pendleton after the 2019 Memorial Day tornado.
The grant was funded by Memphis-based International Paper.
Residents could request a tree, and people could sign up to volunteer is small groups to help plant them.
People could choose from several of large varieties, such as bald cyprus, shumard oak and chinkapin oak; and small and medium types, such as Allegheny serviceberry, American hornbeam and pagoda dogwood.
The trees planted at home were a few feet tall, while the ones planted in the park were several times that height.
Husband and wife duo Tim and Katie Benjamin were among the volunteers; they planted six trees at residences in town.
“Any chance that you get to be stewards of the land, we should do it,” Tim Benjamin.
Al and Sally Parsons of Greenfield, who are members of a tree-planting group in Hancock County, said they headed north to help Pendleton because of a video they saw after the tornado, shown at a DNR event in Bloomington.
“This is something everybody has to pitch in and do, because it’s really too much for one town to do,” Sally said.
Paul and Elizabeth Jarvis of Indianapolis, who are involved with planting trees in Indianapolis, said Saturday marked the first time they decided to plant trees outside of their hometown.
“It’s a really good cause — it was great to come out,” Elizabeth said as they worked on planting a tree alongside a path in the park next to Fall Creek.
Others that contributed to the project include Falls Park staff, Friends of Falls Park and Davey Resource Group (Indianapolis).
Residents receiving a free tree said they loved it.
“It looks good,” Diane Michael said when she came out of her house to see the tree the Benjamins planted at her Adams Street home. “It’s just a baby.
“It looks nice.”
Ashley Knight said she and husband David, who live at State and John streets, were happy to receive a chinkapin oak in their backyard, where their three young children play.
They lost a large huckleberry tree during the tornado.
“We are so thankful for the volunteers,” she said.
