Well.

We always love to show you ways to get involved in the community as you get out and experience Michiana, and there's a really cool way to do that this weekend.

And Annie is joining us to tell us about Three Day Tree Blitz, which is the end, the culminating end of a grant that you guys got to plant a whole bunch of trees.

Tell me first of all about the project overall, how many trees were a part of this process and how many do you have left?

Yeah.

So we have a grant to plant 2000 trees around Elkhart by the end of 2028, and we are coming up on our end year goal to get at least the first thousand in, so that tree blitz is to kind of get the rest of them in for this year.

So we have about 400, a little over 400 that have already been planted, and we have 600 waiting to go in the ground.

So we're hoping to kind of go past that thousand a little bit and set us up nicely for next year.

So what are the three days that people can help, get that accomplished?

Yeah.

So we're starting off this Saturday, October 3rd.

That's our first day.

And then we're doing Sunday, October 11th and Monday, October 12th.

We're just bouncing around to some different neighborhoods that need trees.

How do people get information about how they can come be a part of it and and what kind of stuff do they need to bring with them?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So we have a couple of different avenues where they can find the information, our Facebook page, the parks Facebook page.

Those always have information about the events.

And then our city website.

They have a calendar with all of those dates, as well as a nice landing page for our trees for the heart grant.

So if you want any more information about planting or the grant or anything like that, you can go to City of Elkhart and Gov slash trees and that has all the most updated information.

And then if you want to come out and help us, all the stuff is pretty much there.

We bring the trees, we pre-drilled the hole.

So it'll be nice fluffy dirt that you got to scoop out.

But we've got the shovels and the gloves and snacks and everything, so everything's there for you and anybody can help us plant a tree.

So this is really important for the health of the city.

Can you talk about that?

Why?

It's important to what?

People might not know the term tree canopy of the city.

Talk about why it's important to have trees in in our cities.

I would love to.

So, Yeah, this is, like you said, it's really important for the health of our city.

We're essentially trying to plant in urban forest, around, you know, our neighborhoods, and we're focusing on neighborhoods that need it the most.

And what that means is, yeah, there's a canopy cover.

So that's kind of like the overarching, lid of the city.

You know, when you look up and there's like, leaves everywhere, that's what we want to see.

And there's a lot of reasons that trees are really beneficial for, I mean, for our mental health and for our physical health and just for the maintenance of our city.

So some big things that trees help with are shading out, our sidewalks on nice hot, sunny days, but they help reduce energy costs for homes or businesses where there's a lot of extra shade.

It helps reduce what's called the heat island effect.

So all of our pavement and stuff, if there's no shade, it just sucks up all of that heat during the day and then it releases it overnight.

So you never really get a nice cooling effect in the summer.

And trees really help regulate temperatures and they also help with stormwater.

So we had a lot of storms and stuff this year.

And we do have, you know, stormwater systems in place to handle that.

But obviously people did see flooding and trees help with that.

So they take up hundreds of thousands of gallons of stormwater every year.

The bigger they get, the more they take up.

And that's really great for our infrastructure and for the safety of our homes.

We don't want flooded basements or anything, so it's nice to have trees around to help with that.

Not to mention they help with clean air.

They help provide habitat for birds and other critters that you like to see around.

And they also help just with safety.

There's studies that show that people drive more slowly down streets that have trees on both sides of them.

So there's a lot of reasons to have trees, and we're here for every single one of them.

And the reason it's a three day blitz now is because we're kind of reaching the end of the season where we should plant trees because of the frost coming soon.

That's right.

So we want to get them in before the ground freezes.

This is a perfect time to plant.

We've got a little bit of rain coming this week, so the ground's going to be great for those trees that are going in.

It's a lot more comfortable than planting in the middle of the summer, too.

So we'll have some nice, cool weather, and it'll be.

It'll be perfect fall day to get some trees in the ground.

So remind us real quick, what are the days that you guys are doing this three day blitz?

Yeah, so we are doing it Saturday, October 3rd, Sunday, October 11th and Monday, October 12th.

Very good.

And we'll have the link to that on our social media and on our website.

So if you guys missed that earlier we'll make sure that we connect you any.

Thank you so much for all the hard work that you guys are doing, and for helping make our cities a better place.

Yeah, thanks for helping to spread the word.