THE LEAFLET

Last Saturday was Earth Day – an annual event celebrated on April 22nd to raise awareness about environmental issues and promote conservation. It was first celebrated in 1970 and is credited with helping to launch the modern environmental movement as we know it today!

We’ve been staying busy and giving back to communities all month long and last weekend was no different! We kicked off the weekend with a tree planting at Catholic University on Friday, where students, staff, and Casey Trees crew members came together to get 89 trees in the ground.

Then on Saturday, we held a Community Tree Planting at Fort Stanton and assisted the Anacostia Watershed Society with their Earth Day Invasive Removal at Hellbender Hill. The day was filled with joy and laughter as everyone worked together to show Mother Earth some love! We’re so grateful to all the volunteers who came out to make a difference for their community.

Casey Trees also hit a very exciting milestone at Fort Stanton, while adding 51 trees to the hills of the park – we planted our 50,000th tree as an organization! This is HUGE for us. To put it in perspective, it took almost 10 years to get our first 10,000 trees planted, and now we’re adding that many trees to the District about every two years!

This is a testament to the will, dedication, and passion of not only our people here at Casey Trees, but to everyone who has helped us get here. To our supporters, volunteers, partners, and neighbors – we couldn’t have done it without you. Cheers to 50,000 more!

We also had the pleasure of celebrating one of our own – founding board member, Barbara Shea. The Garden Club of America honored Barbara through the planting of a Scarlet Oak. We all thanked Barbara for her efforts in helping to establish Casey Trees and for all she has done over the past 22 years to keep Casey Trees strong. Without Barbara’s vision and hard work, Casey Trees would likely not be celebrating the 50,000 tree milestone we’ve reached today.

While we celebrate, it’s still important to also acknowledge that canopy loss isn’t just a DC problem, but a regional issue. Trees don’t care where state lines start or end – and neither should we. It’s time to adopt a regional tree canopy goal for the DMV and work alongside our neighbors to see it happen. Learn more about how canopy loss is affecting the region by reading the 2022 Tree report Card.