The weather may have been cool and dreary, but that didn’t stop members of the Longvue Acres Garden Club from their goal of planting 75 trees April 11 in North Park to commemorate the group’s 75th anniversary.
Members, family and friends met at the North Park Horse Show Ring on Kummer Road for the tree planting on a nearby grassy area. The event was done in partnership with the Allegheny County Parks Foundation and with the help of rangers from Allegheny County Parks.
“We had all 75 trees planted in 50 minutes. Most teams planted a total of four trees, and most of us kept at least one tree tag as a memento. The Allegheny County Parks rangers were there to supervise and pound the stakes for us. Other than that, we did all the planting on our own and felt that sense of accomplishment,” said Claudia Hickly of McCandless, the club’s 75th anniversary chairperson.
The event was organized by fellow club member Mary Jo Clayton of Franklin Park, Hickly said. Out of the club’s 36 members, 24 participated, including 42-year member Bev Steiger, who Hickly said is now in her 80s.
The park rangers selected the site and provided the necessary tools for the planting. Braden Meiter, lead supervisory park ranger for Allegheny County Parks, provided guidelines on the benefits of the planting site and a demonstration.
“The rangers were extremely well organized from their trunkload of shovels, gloves and equipment to preparing the site for tree planting. We also appreciated partnering with Allegheny County Parks Foundation and Tree Pittsburgh. ACPF was extremely helpful in facilitating our project, and Tree Pittsburgh gave us a discount on the trees and the protective tubing,” Hickly said.
Allegheny County Parks Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports county parks by raising funds and awareness for its nine parks, often working with the park rangers in projects like these, according to Jess Kaplan, development director for the foundation.
“Plantings like this are really essential to our mission to improve, conserve and restore the nine parks in Allegheny County,” Kaplan said. “This is essential to our work so we’re happy to get trees in the park.”
Species included chestnut, witch hazel, maples, white pines, chokecherry and redbud, among others.
The site selected for the plantings was a grassy area with no real recreational value. The land slopes down and gets pretty saturated so it makes it difficult to mow. And the grass really doesn’t provide any ecological value to our park system, Meiter said.
“It also doesn’t really help control runoff of water at all. So mow grass is about the same permeability as a paved parking lot. We want to try to reduce that in our parks as much as possible,” he said.
The planting will help “push out the forest edge. Kind of restore a little bit of our forest canopy,” Meiter said.
“The trees will help suck up water and reduce runoff. And it’s also going to provide a great habitat for small mammals, for birds. It’ll be food sources for those small mammals and birds and also reptiles that live in this area,” he added.
Trees were obtained from Tree Pittsburgh, which grows trees native to this Pennsylvania area, increasing their chances of viability, said Meiter, who was joined by three fellow park rangers.
Longvue Acres Garden Club member Chris Kerin joined the others to help out.
“It’s so important because this is actually our 75-year anniversary. Obviously, the trees are important environmentally, but it signifies our 75 years. It was a great idea. It’s not the greatest day but at least it’s not rainy,” said Kerin of Ross.
Sue Brozick of Franklin Park, a club member, also participated.
“I’ve always loved gardening,” she said, adding she recently found out her aunt was president of the club in 1956 — before Brozick was born.
Longvue Acres Garden Club was founded in the fall of 1950 by the first residents of the Brown Vaughn Development Corporation in McCandless, known as the Longvue Acres Plan 3, according to the club’s blog at longvueacresgardenclub.blogspot.com.
“We were all thrilled and grateful for the experience,” said Hickly, who brought her neighbors, Maria and Joe Haffely.
“They were glad to contribute to such a worthwhile project. We all felt like that,” Hickly said.