EcoEKY: Green News from Eastern Kentucky

from the Ashland Daily Independent:

Trees by the sack

Wurtland students prepare seedlings for ‘Project Earth’

By MIKE JAMES
The Independent

Published: April 24, 2008 10:43 pm

WURTLAND — A white pine seedling isn’t much to look at, being only a few inches long with scraggly brown roots.

But they grow fast enough that in a few years they’re head-high. Executives from the duPont plant in Wurtland came to Wurtland Middle School on Thursday with enough of the seedlings for all 330 students, plus their teachers, and a few more for an outdoor classroom the students plan to construct.

“We hope they’ll take them home and plant them. We’re trying to be a good neighbor,” said plant manager Tim Albert. “These kids are the future. Some of them are the folks that will work at the plant in a decade or so.”

Dupont purchased the trees from the Kentucky Division of Forestry and donated them to the school. The seedlings come in bags the size of feed sacks, 100 to the bag.

Students helped teachers separate the seedlings and carefully wrap the roots in wet paper towels.

“This is a good way to learn how to put a diaper on a baby,” said Skyler Nichols, a sixth-grader.

He is looking forward to taking a tree home to plant, because he still has the one he received in a similar giveaway when he was in second grade. That tree now is between eight and 10 feet tall.

“I like this idea because it helps put out more oxygen,” Skyler said. “Since people cut down all kinds of trees, this is a good way to replant them so they don’t all disappear.”

Some of the trees will end up in the outdoor classroom, which is the brainchild of Wurtland’s seventh- and eighth-grade community problem solving team, said team adviser Lori Newman. Dubbed “Project Earth,” the classroom was conceived as a tool to raise awareness of environmentally friendly practices, she said.

It will include habitats for butterflies and bluebirds, planting beds for vegetables or botanical projects, an erosion station to demonstrate the effect of water dripping on limestone, and lots of flowers, shrubs and trees.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.