Drought conditions didn’t make the ground easy to dig up Saturday when volunteers tried to help plant more than two dozen trees in Central and Bixler parks in Warsaw, but they gave it their best efforts.
Funded by a grant, the purpose of the tree planting in part was to help create awareness of trees downtown and in urban environments, according to Warsaw Assistant City Planner Jackson Longenbaugh.
“This is the city of Warsaw’s tree-planting day. I applied for a grant last fall through Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute. This specific cohort is called Urban Green Infrastructure, that’s the cohort that we’re in this year. We were awarded that,” he said.

    Volunteers plant a tree at Bixler Park on Saturday. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.
  

Iris Sorrell, graduate student at Indiana University, was in Warsaw during the summer - May to August - to prep and plan for the tree plantings. She chose Saturday as the tree-planting date months ago, not knowing then that there would be drought conditions now.
She said, “This is part of the McKinney Climate Fellowship through I.U., through the Environmental Resilience Institute, and Warsaw was part of a partnership to receive 100 trees this year. So I worked all summer in the office, figuring out where to map them, where we should put them and what kind of trees people wanted. Today, all of that is coalescing into right now, being able to plant them. We’re aiming for 30 today, and then the next 70 will be planted through December.”
Funding for the project came from a USDA grant. USDA outline the cities that would be a part of the program. Warsaw applied and the square mile downtown was eligible for the grant funding, she said.
“We get up to 100 trees that are planted and maintained by Davey Resource Group,” Longenbaugh said, adding it’s a great opportunity to create a tree canopy that benefits everyone in Warsaw. “There are so many benefits to trees in general. We chose to put them - a lot of them - in our parks close to downtown so that everyone can benefit from having those in a public space.”
Some of the 100 trees will eventually be planted on private properties, but Saturday’s event specifically was a volunteer opportunity to create awareness and plant the trees around Center Lake.
The trees that didn’t get planted Saturday will be contracted out by Davey Resource Group to get completed by the end of December. The subcontractors will maintain the trees for the next three years, paid for by the grant. After three years, the property owners become owners of the trees.
“There’s a variety of properties around the city that will benefit from that,” Longenbaugh said.
The type of trees were selected by Sorrell, though some were requested by landowners. Longenbaugh said Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department Superintendent Larry Plummer requested a certain type of tree to continue a tree line along Ind. 15 in Bixler Park. Longenbaugh said there were a variety of trees selected, but all native trees and a good fit for the site they’ll be planted in.
On how big and tall the trees will get, Sorrell said they’re mostly going to be ornamental trees like crab apple, Allegheny serviceberry, nice flowering trees.
“I put out a survey in July and that’s what most people kind of want, those flowering trees that just look really good downtown,” she said. “And then kind of the biggest tree on there, I think, is a white oak. There’s not many large trees though, mostly just small trees.”
Volunteers for Saturday’s event included Cub Scouts, middle school students and individuals who wanted to help. Davey Resource Group provided a demonstration to the volunteers on how they should plant the trees.
Connie Penninger, with Scout Pack 3731, said they had six Scouts at the event and 18 people total. Some of the parents took part even though their Scouts were not free to take part.
“We just like giving back to the community and so we thought it was a neat idea for the kids to plant the trees. We come and have activities in these parks, and so then we can see some of our hard work in helping the community,” she said.
The Scouts range from kindergarten to fifth grade.
Longenbaugh said he hoped the tree-planting creates some awareness of the benefits of trees for possible future programs. He said the city is currently not a Tree City USA.
“These are our first steps in aiming toward more environmental programs or maintenance here in the city,” he said.
Besides Bixler and Center parks, other trees will be planted at Fribley Field, Richardson-Dubois Park, Hire Park, hopefully the Marsh property, the Animal Medical Center on Winona Avenue, the property at 523 S. Buffalo St., Warsaw Meadows and Trinity Methodist Church on Center Street, he stated.
Sorrell said from an aerial view, there’s a lot of asphalt and concrete downtown Warsaw. Those soak up a lot of heat.
“Trees are able to kind of shade the area more, especially kind of along these walkways, which is what we’re aiming for, and it actually reflects more light back up. But mostly the shade. It helps cool. Shade a lot of times cools the area almost 10 degrees more than if you’re out in the sun,” she said.