Area residents interested in learning how to properly plant trees—and training others to do the same—are invited to a citizen forestry workshop this Saturday organized by non-profit Louisville Grows.Valerie Magnuson, executive director of Louisville Grows, said with the current state of Louisville’s tree canopy, it’s even more necessary to have as many people as possible trained to plant and care for trees.“I think we need probably in the range of one to two million trees to just replace the trees that we’re losing thanks to the Emerald Ash Borer, but also our older canopy is aging out,” Magnuson said. “We really need to get in and replace these with younger trees.”The city’s declining canopy is already causing environmental problems, contributing to theurban heat island effectand increased rainwater runoff. Magnuson said the hope is that the volunteers her group trains will turn around and pass their knowledge on to others.“The citizen foresters, even if they’re not planting trees with Louisville Grows or the Love Louisville Trees project, can still teach others in their communities how to plant trees,” she said. “And hopefully it’ll spread in a grassroots movement, because we need so many trees in the Louisville area.”Louisville Grows’ citizen forestry training is at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Shelby Park Community Center. Citizen foresters will be trained to lead volunteer groups who will plant trees during a community planting day in the Shelby Park neighborhood on Nov. 8. For more information, or to sign up, click here.
