Baltimore Foundation Offers Conservation-Grade Trees
Baltimore’s Parks & People Foundation is offering a special kind of tree sale this spring aimed at boosting the region’s tree cover quickly.
The foundation teamed up with RPM Ecosystems, a wholesale native plant nursery in Dryden, New York, to sell year-old trees grown with a root production method (RPM) that helps them grow three times faster than normal … meaning they can sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere three times faster than conventional young trees.
RPM starts with native seeds — no genetic modification — and organic soil, then bolsters young plants with “balanced nutrition, soil microbial and fungal relationships, container growing in special media,” and other practices, including acclimatizing trees to local conditions. The result is hardy trees with high survival rates, early flower and seed production, and root masses that can be 18 times larger than normal trees.
Many government agencies and conservation groups have turned to RPM trees, including the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Trout Unlimited and the Wild Turkey Federation.
Orders for the Parks & People Foundation tree sale must be in by March 28, and tree pickup is set for Saturday April 12, at the Boy Scouts of America, Baltimore Area Council at 701 Wyman Park Drive in Baltimore. Trees are $45 each, and several varieties are available, including bald cypress, bur oak, pin oak, red bud, red maple, red oak and roughleaf dogwood.
