10/23/2025
Our very first Missouri Conservation Corps community tree planting event will take place this week on Thursday, October 23rd. This event will serve as a learning template for a future Columbia Tree Corps program that will use tree planting as a tool for relationship building, canopy development, and community engagement. This week’s event will focus on the Fresh Start for Sober Living office at 1101 Grand Avenue, but additional trees will be deployed to nearly 30 households in the neighborhood. This tree planting event will allow us to put into practice the activities described in a tree planting grant proposal that we worked on last year with community and organization partners.
The planting event will run from 3-6 p.m. on Thursday, October 23rd at Fresh Start for Sober Living, 1101 Grand Avenue. Community partners and organizations are encouraged to come and join us, and organizations with community resources are welcome to bring a table to this event. Volunteers from the neighborhood will be helping us to plant the trees, and community partners, organizations, neighbors and friends are invited to join.
This will be the first community tree planting event in a series of events this fall scheduled to bring trees, tree education and community engagement to Columbia neighborhoods in need of additional canopy. If you are interested in attending or volunteering with us at these events, please feel free to reach out directly and let us know. If you have questions about this event, or about our tree-planting plans for urban Columbia, just ask. This is a new leap for our organization, and the trials, difficulties, and successes we encounter this fall will become the template that we use to build this urban tree-planting project into a more determined, refined tree-planting program in 2026.
Special thanks goes out to James Bayless, Leigh Kottwitz, Pat Kelley, Aarow Builders, City of Columbia, MO - Office of Sustainability, Volunteer Columbia, Forest ReLeaf of Missouri, Missouri Dept. of Conservation. Thank you!
