Community Corner

300 Trees Planted at Brook Run Park During Service Day

Dunwoody's annual Clean, Fix, Shine-up Day brought out many local volunteers, including Mayor Mike Davis. Other volunteers came from colleges such as Georgia Tech, Emory, and Southern Poly Technical Institute.

On Saturday, Trees Atlanta and 250 Dunwoody volunteers planted 300 trees in Brook Run Park. Under sunny skies, volunteers and staff split up into four teams to plant what is now the largest planting in a single morning in Trees Atlanta’s history.

It was Dunwoody’s annual Clean, Fix, Shine-up Day, which brought out many local volunteers, including Mayor Mike Davis. Other volunteers came from colleges such as Georgia Tech, Emory, and Southern Poly Technical Institute, and Trees Atlanta’s database of dedicated volunteers.

Trees Atlanta was invited by the city of Dunwoody to replace trees that were removed during the installation of a new walking trail around Brook Run Park. 

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To prepare for the event, Trees Atlanta staff members Susan Pierce Cunningham and Linc Weis met with Dunwoody Parks and Recreation Manager Brent Walker to sort out logistics. They decided on planting locations, arranged tree delivery, recruited volunteers, and called the utility company to make sure no underground utility lines would be disturbed by planting. Tree holes were pre-dug.

“Pre-digging the holes turned out to be really helpful, and definitely ensured maximum smoothness of the planting project,” said Pierce. “We only had three hours to plant 300 trees, and without the pre-dug holes, so much of our time would’ve been spent digging.”

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The trees were all native and some species included several species of oaks, red maples, sugar maples, serviceberries, dogwoods, lindens, and hornbeams.

Pierce was especially excited about the paw paw -  a fruit-bearing tree - and the bigleaf magnolias that volunteers strategically planted next to some Devil’s Walkingstick trees. “Devil’s Walkingstick trees have the biggest compound leaf of any tree in the Eastern U.S., and the bigleaf magnolia has the biggest single leaf, so it’ll be a really neat contrast as these trees grow alongside each other,” Pierce said. 

The trees will be maintained for two years.

You can find the trees along the new walking trail, roadways, and in meadows near the community garden.


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