Tree Steward Doug Dickman went with Gildea to pick up leftover plastic tree tubes, short and large wooden stakes, bundles of wire, plastic deer guards, etc. from the Arlington Trades Center and County Nursery. Heavy wire was staked down to close an unauthorized path. There will also be a large enclosure of chicken wire surrounding the steep bank where the 50 Virginia Creeper plants were planted. The hope is that these efforts will keep bikers from sliding down the bank. It will be a learning experience over the next year to see which protective device is most effective at deterring deer and bikers. This is a pilot for future tree steward volunteer events involving protection post planting. Once there is agreement on best practices, those could become as common as watering after planting, and benefit parks throughout the region.

Senior tree steward Nora Palmatier wasn’t sure what excited her most. Was it that 12 tree stewards and master naturalists turned out to work with 15 volunteers from the community, or that five of the new tree steward training class, which doesn’t even start until February, came to join in? Or was it that El Quetzal, which does the landscaping for a nearby condo, volunteered all day Saturday even though they had worked outside all week? The owner Victor Lopez knows and loves trees, and his native plant and tree knowledge impressed the tree stewards, along with his record of community work in Arlington. 

Or was it that, “Jo Allen got a taco truck to come at lunch time for those of us who stayed all day, and it was better than the bananas we've always had.”   

For more information about Tree Stewards and how to sign up for the next class, see: https://treestewards.org. 

For more about Brandymore Castle, see, https://library.arlingtonva.us/2019/04/11/rediscover-brandymore-castle/.