On February 24th, Elizabeth Eason Architecture participated in Tennessee Environmental Council’s 250K Tree Day. TEC’s goal for 2018 was to have volunteers plant 250,000 trees across Tennessee. The native tree seedlings are grown by the TN Department of Agriculture’s East Tennessee Nursery. This year they provided us with dogwood, hawthorn, tulip poplar, red bud, red oak, as well as white and short leaf pine saplings.
Apart from beautifying our neighborhoods, trees have far-reaching positive effects, such as removing CO2 from the atmosphere. A less known benefit of trees is that by intercepting rainfall with their canopies they reduce the quantity of stormwater runoff and downstream flooding. This in turn improves the water quality of local streams.
I have participated by planting trees the past two years and jumped at the chance to help distribute trees to others this year. With Monika’s help we handed out 500 native tree seedlings at North Knoxville’s Edgewood Park.
Here’s how planting 500 trees in North Knoxville can contribute to sustainable neighborhoods:
4325 tons of CO2 removed from atmosphere
13lbs of CO2/year per tree for first 10 years + 40lbs of CO2/year for subsequent 40 years (source: urbanforestrynetwork.org/benefits)
25 million gallons of rainfall intercepted by tree canopy
1,000 gallons/year per tree x 50 years (source: Center for Urban Forest Research, USDA – cufr.ucdavis.edu)
North Knoxville neighbors picking up their trees on 250K Tree Day.