Project Details: Greenscape of Jacksonville is the oldest tree advocacy organization in Florida and the second oldest in the nation. They are credited with contributing over 350,000 trees to Jacksonville’s tree canopy since 1975. In recent years, Greenscape has added community engagement and maintenance as key components to their work. Sage Growth Solutions was hired to assist in expanding its community engagement and maintenance work within its current budget structure.
Challenge: Greenscape has a staff of two full-time employees and a strong volunteer base for tree plantings. Volunteers and funders are excited to see trees put in the ground, but maintenance is not always the most exciting aspect of tree planting, so recruiting volunteers for maintenance work can be difficult. In addition, Greenscape has not found dedicated funding sources for a tree maintenance program, so adding more service days specifically for maintenance to a full tree planting schedule is a challenge.
Opportunity: Greenscape’s planting projects are located on school campuses and in City parks. With funds provided for community engagement, Sage Growth Solutions saw the opportunity to engage the students on these campuses in tree stewardship after tree planting. Partnering with the students offered a great opportunity for Greenscape to expand its maintenance program using a dedicated group already on site and give students the opportunity to earn service hours within their normal schedule.
Solution: Sage coordinated with after-school clubs, especially national honors societies, gardening clubs, aftercare programs, and teachers, to host a separate service day that focused on maintenance. In conjunction with these service days, Sage developed age-appropriate maintenance guides tailored to the trees planted on their campuses for the students.
The maintenance guide templates were created in Canva. This allows Greenscape to tailor each guide to the school. Three types of customizable guides were created.
- Field Guide: The field guide, pictured above, “Fruit Tree Maintenance Guide,” is a reusable 5.5 x 8.5 inch spiral bound, laminated booklet. The guide details the types of trees on the campus, what tools and supplies are needed, and has monthly instructions on how to care for the trees. This guide provides space for the users to log the work completed. A permanent marker can be used to write in the booklet and erased using rubbing alcohol when the user is ready to start a new maintenance year. The field guide pictured above was created for middle school students in the I’m A Star Foundation after-school program to steward the two fruit trees they planted on their campus with Greenscape of Jacksonville.
- Maintenance Guides: Two maintenance guides were created to serve elementary school students and middle/high school students.
- The “Environmental Health Arboretum” maintenance guide for middle/high schools is an 8.5×11 inch spiral bound booklet written on an 8th-grade reading level. The guide focuses on the environmental health benefits of planting and maintaining trees in Jacksonville’s urban forest. The main four sections of the guide provide details on each species of tree planted on the campus – their arboretum, break down the seasonal interests for each tree, care instructions, and finally, a list of local resources, including Greenscape of Jacksonville, to assist them in stewarding their campus arboretum. The guide pictured above was created for Darnell-Cookman School of the Medical Arts’ Green Thumbs Club to steward the 50 new trees planted on their campus.
- The “Cool Schools Cool Kids” maintenance guide for elementary schools is a 5.5×8.5 inch spiral bound booklet written on a 4th-grade reading level. The guide includes the same elements as the middle/high school guide. In keeping with the guides being age-appropriate, instead of detailed tree care instructions, there are three Project Learning Tree activities – tree identification, spotting tree damage and disease, and connecting them with additional opportunities to plant trees – and who to contact if the tree needs care. The guide pictured above was created for Crown Point Elementary and Jacksonville Beach Elementary schools to steward the 20 new trees planted on each campus.
