40th Anniversary Highlight: Wolf River Conservancy's First Tree Planting Event

In 1990, just 5 years after its official beginning in 1985, the Wolf River Conservancy hosted its very first community tree planting event at the Wolf River near the intersection of Humphreys Blvd. and Kirby Parkway. A variety of habitat restoration and stewardship efforts by small groups of volunteers had already been taking place up to that point – river cleanups, trail building, invasive plant removal, etc. But Nov. 18^th, 1990, seems to have been the first attempt to gather a large group of volunteers and a variety of community groups for a big project: the planting of thousands of native trees to restore wetland habitat degraded by the construction of Humphreys Blvd.

Led by the volunteer co-chairs of the Conservancy’s Habitat Inventory team, Larry Wilson and Betty Tabatabai, the project was entitled ReLEAF for Wolf River.  The City of Memphis provided funding for seedlings, supplemented by several thousand dug up by Betty and Larry to have on hand for the event.  On the big day, 30 organizations and individuals adopted plots which they filled with seedlings.  Participants included students from Craigmont High, Mt. Pisgah Elementary, Rhodes College, and Shelby State Community College; several Scout troops and the Tate County 4-H Club; Boyle Investment and West Tennessee Nurserymen and Landscapers Association; Pink Palace Museum, Lichterman Nature Center, Audubon Society, Memphis Wildflower Society, Memphis Horticultural Society, Houston Garden Club, and WKNO-TV; government representatives from Germantown and Shelby County, and, of course, Wolf River Conservancy.

From the old newsletters and photos in our archives, it appears that tree planting did not become an annual event until 2005, and that we have made a point of planting trees with volunteers every year since, with tens of thousands of trees planted in that time.  We will be planting more on March 1^st  at Mud Island during this year’s event, the 20^th Annual Tree Planting.  And the plots filled with seedlings by volunteers way back in 1990 – the cypresses, oaks, maples, ashes, and other species - have grown for 35 years into the woods you see as you walk the Greenway near Kirby Pkwy, the land there protected by a conservation easement in perpetuity.  

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