Hey Corning, it's Nice to Meet You

First things first, let's get some introductions taken care of!

We are a new organization in Corning, New York called the Corning Street Tree Project. 

We are pretty obsessed with street trees and because of that, we have a very specific mission: we plan to assist the City of Corning in planting trees along the streets.

Our main goal is to catch up and maintain a healthy network of street trees in our city.

To do that, we will be educating the public on why we think street trees are so vital to our community, and we will fundraise to buy and plant even more trees. Once we've helped the city catch up on what we like to call "holes" in the street tree forest, we'll continue to plant and maintain the trees.

So why are we doing this? 

Well, my cofounders and I learned in the last year that whenever trees are cut down in the City of Corning, there is no one who is specifically able to replace them. 

There are a lot of reasons trees need to be trimmed or cut down (mostly safety and utility availability) but we were saddened to learn that the City hasn't had money in the budget to replace downed trees for over two decades!

We know arborists like to say "the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best time to plant a tree is today" so we immediately felt like something needed to be done.

When we met with city leaders, we were excited to hear that they really do care about trees and they are super supportive of our idea to start this organization.

We discussed how public-private partnership is the future of success for small cities like ours who are faced with tough budgeting decisions.

So here we are! Just getting started on a journey to enrich our city with some very important and strategically placed trees! 

Please join us on this adventure... follow us on facebook, twitter, and instagram. And please spread the words to your friends.

We'll be back here on the blog in upcoming weeks to talk more about what we're doing and why we're doing it.

Want to join us in celebration of Arbor Day? 

Follow the donate button at the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes and donate to the Corning Street Tree Project Fund in the "choose a fund" dropdown menu. 

Questions? Comments? Want to volunteer? Contact us any time at corningtrees@gmail.com