Tree Lovers Cultivate Seedlings to Give Away

Orange County will soon have thousands more trees.

A public-private partnership is funding a nursery where seedlings will grow in containers until they are old enough to stand alone. About 6,000 trees eventually will be donated to parks, schools and other public agencies that cannot afford to buy them.

“Trees improve the community, beautify it. They clean the air and provide shade,” said Bob Snell, an Irvine Ranch Water District facilities services supervisor who spearheaded the partnership.

“Unfortunately, spending is so tight nowadays that they don’t fit into city and school budgets,” Snell said.

The Shade Tree Partnership was founded in Irvine in 1990, Snell said, but produced only a small number of trees each year because it relied on limited state funding.

By recruiting corporate sponsors and private grants, however, the partnership was able to build a nursery at UC Irvine, where it expects to produce about 2,000 trees annually. The nursery is a joint project between Irvine Ranch Water District, UC Irvine and half a dozen companies.

The nursery was built by volunteers after the University of California agreed to provide a 3 1/2-acre site for the project on its Irvine campus.

In exchange for use of the land, the partnership will plant 300 trees a year on the UC Irvine campus to supplement Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening’s Green and Gold plan to landscape the campus with trees native to California, said Richard Demerjian, director of campus and environmental planning at UC Irvine.

Most of the money to buy seedlings, soil and containers came from a grant from the National Tree Trust. Local companies helped too by supplying irrigation equipment and fertilizer.

The nursery costs little to operate because it is maintained by volunteers and an automated irrigation system that detects when trees need watering by measuring the air’s humidity.

While the community will benefit from the trees, researchers and businesses also hope to gain. As part of an experiment for University of California Cooperative Extension, half of the nursery trees are being irrigated with reclaimed water and the other half with potable water.

“It’s a two-way street,” said Lee Wozniak, environmental horticulturist at Target Specialty Products in Santa Fe Springs, a member of the partnership. “We’re allowed to use the grounds for testing, and they get the trees.

“It’s important we try things before we take them onto production,” Wozniak said. “We’d rather try it on little three-acre [sites] rather than ruin a park or greenbelt.”