Mission:Change donation bolsters tree replanting efforts in Albany/Dougherty County

ALBANY — The Grow Albany initiative to replant trees after an estimated 10,000 were lost in January storms received a significant financial boost last week when Mission:Change donated $20,000 to the cause.

The Mission:Change donation is expected to help with projects in the fall 2018 planting season that will involve the first residential replanting effort and additional community park plantings.

Judy Bowles, executive director of Keep Albany-Dougherty Beautiful, said Mission:Change joins Phoebe Putney Health System as the second platinum sponsor for the replanting effort.

“We’ve lost over 10,000 trees” to the January storms, Bowles said.

The trees were toppled and badly damaged when straight-line winds that clocked at more than 90 mph tore through the area Jan. 2. On Jan. 22, more storms brought high winds and a devastating EF-3 tornado through Albany and other parts of Southwest Georgia.

The projects utilizing the Mission:Change donation will be scheduled for fall because the tree planting season in the Albany area runs from November to February.

“After that,” Bowles said, “it just gets too hot to plant trees.”

Grow Albany had a project last month in the Radium Springs area and has one scheduled Feb. 17 at Tift Park, she said.

For future residential replantings, Mission:Change and Grow Albany will provide, distribute and plant trees for local community residents who are not physically able to plant trees for themselves, the organizations said in announcing the funding.

“Mission:Change has funds specifically set aside for storm relief,” Mission:Change co-founder LaDonna Urick said. “For many homeowners, the loss and removal of trees created a major financial hardship in 2017. Our partnership with Grow Albany will allow us to add a landscaping element to storm relief projects.”

Meanwhile, Grow Albany will close out the current planting season with an Arbor Day event at Tift Park. Bowles said 218 oaks in 30-gallon containers and 749 shrubs will be planted along the carriage trail that encircles the park.

She said the project also will create a trailhead for the Rails-to-Trails path. That path is planned to stretch from Radium Springs in the south to Sasser in the northwest.

“We’re going to put the trees on the original carriage trail,” she said. “We have an aerial shot that shows where the original trees were. This project is to replant these trees.”

Bowles said she hopes there will be a good turnout of community volunteers for the planting project.

“We want the community to be here with us (for the planting),” she said. “We hope people will get their shovels and come on out.”

In addition, Grow Albany will give away 500 trees in 3-gallon buckets that day that are being provided by the National Arbor Day Foundation.

Bowles said the destruction from the storm has strongly altered the cityscape, something Grow Albany is trying to recapture, though the results will be years down the road.

“Albany is known for our oak trees — spectacular, majestic oaks,” she said. “It won’t look like it did (before the storms), of course, because our trees aren’t 100 years old.

“We have to do what our forefathers did for us. What we’re doing is for future generations. “

Mission:Change is a grassroots nonprofit that has been supporting the Albany area since 2008 by focusing on local worthwhile causes and by being a resource to community members in need.

To join in the effort to replant trees lost to storms as a sponsor or volunteer, contact Bowles with KADB at (229) 430-5257 or email her at [email protected]. More information also may be found at www.growalbany.com or the Grow Albany Facebook page.