FirstEnergy tree program puts down roots in Northwood park

More than 500 trees are going into the ground at a Northwood park on Wednesday, thanks to a FirstEnergy grant.

Hannah Catlett, a spokesman for FirstEnergy, said 512 trees are being donated to Northwood Community Cares. The majority of these trees will be planted in Brentwood Park. The others will be planted at the Nature Trails Park.

Councilman Mike Melnyk, who is the liaison for the city’s tree commission, said they are using the grant to plant 18 trays of about 30 saplings each.

Northwood Community Cares is also part of the planting effort.

“That allows FirstEnergy to take volunteers that they have ... instead of going to work that day, they will plant trees,” Mr. Melnyk said.

Starting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, volunteers will mobilize in the former Lark Elementary parking lot on Andrus Road. The planting is expected to continue through 1 p.m.

The trees are needed at the 15-acre park, Mr. Melnyk said.

“It’s basically a big field. We’ve got this nice big walking track, but there isn’t a lot of shade,” he said. “In 10 years [after the trees develop], when people are walking in 90-degree weather at the park, they won’t be in the sun the whole time.”

More trees will also change the landscape of the disc golf course at the park, he said.

“There’s no challenge to that either, because it’s all flat, open land,” Mr. Melnyk said of the treeless space.

“When you play soccer out there, because there’s no trees, the wind whips through,” Mayor Ed Schimmel said. “And there’s no shade. I get that complaint a lot from people watching baseball games or soccer.”

Michelle Genzman, chairman of the city’s tree commission, invited the Northwood community to help plant the trees on Wednesday.

“We really want to thank FirstEnergy. It’s a beautiful program they’re putting on for the community,” she said. “It is definitely a park that is in need of trees.”

She hopes the saplings will grow into hearty trees in the next five to 10 years.

“We tried to go with the ones that were faster growers,” Ms. Genzman said.

Ms. Catlett said the species that will be planted include red maple, sugar maple, sweet gum, chestnut oak, red oak, sycamore, river birch, and flowering dogwood.

“We think trees provide an array of important benefits,” she said, adding that they absorb carbon and soak up storm water that causes erosion, preserving streams and riverbanks.

Ms. Catlett also said that trees are FirstEnergy’s main cause of power outages.

“So there’s a level of coordination,” she said. “We’re planting in areas that are not going to affect equipment.”

FirstEnergy has several green teams, comprised of company employees, who volunteer to support environmental initiatives, including tree-planting events and park cleanups, Ms. Catlett said.

So far this year, 27,379 trees have been planted across the FirstEnergy six-state territory by green teams and the community tree program. That amounts to over 2,600 hours of volunteer time.

Of that number, 1,163 trees have been planted in the Toledo area.

Communities that are interested in collaborating to plan a tree planting can email greenteams@firstenergycorp.com .