Energy Saving Trees

A Creation Care Ministry

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today.

Last Friday, the Creation Care team held our third annual Energy Saving Tree giveaway. Our ministry is inspired by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, “As followers of Jesus we care for God’s world, because God cares for God’s world, and this means we care about climate change.”  

Energy Saving Trees is a program of the Arbor Day Foundation, which enables homeowners to use a GPS map of their property to determine the best tree location in their yard to maximize energy savings. For the past three years All Saints’ has partnered with the City of Concord to offer free native trees to homeowners. Concord remains the only city in North Carolina and All Saints’ the only faith community in the US to participate in this program. This program is made possible by funding from the City of Concord and Cannon Charitable Interests.  

This year, 122 one-gallon size trees were mailed directly to homeowners and 100 larger size trees were available for pick up on October 22 at All Saints’.  In addition to the 100 trees from the Arbor Day Foundation, we gave away 50 trees from the All Saints’ Native Tree nursery! A teaching demonstration station featured proper tree planting, painted marks on the grass illustrating future growth of the trees, soil amendments, and proper watering. The 20-year beneficial outcomes for these 222 trees are: 430,000 kWh energy saved, 710,000 lbs. of carbon sequestered, and over 3 million gallons of storm water runoff filtered!

A dedicated team of 14 volunteers made the event a reality. By compressing the event down to a 6-hour timeframe, compared to two 8-hour days in past years, we were all just busy enough that NO pictures were taken of the event. However, I did take one picture of a spontaneous gift to our team. Janet Hollopeter walked the grounds of All Saints’ and gathered every one of the flowers in this picture, which she expertly arranged in a vase.  They became the altar flowers for this “service,” pun intended. Home-grown flowers from the Gardens of All Saints’. . .priceless! If you are interested in Creation Care at All Saints’, please contact me!

Faithfully,
Mark D. Robinson