Plant Newnan efforts keep branching out | News

While residents were busy in recovery mode, a small grassroots group of citizens recognized the importance of planning to reestablish a tree canopy.

Amidst the disaster, Plant Newnan was born and began building partnerships to create planting programs that would ensure quality species of trees were established in the tornado-affected areas.

Plant Newnan – a 501(c)(3) nonprofit – is the brainchild of Scott Berta, one of the hundreds of Newnan residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the storm.

His goal? To create a shared vision for the city’s future landscape and provide a path forward for reestablishing the mature trees lost to the tornado.

Since its inception in August of 2021, Plant Newnan has been busy finding opportunities to reforest tornado-ravaged areas. To date, Plant Newnan has either planted or handed out almost 2,000 trees.

Most recently, Plant Newnan partnered with the city of Newnan to plant a mix of 68 oak trees on East Broad Street.

The site had been cleared and chemically prepared for planted pines, but Plant Newnan envisioned a different path.

With the city’s help, they took into account existing utility infrastructure to design tree planting locations that will minimize future impacts to the infrastructure and the trees as well as enough spacing between the trees to allow for future use of the property.

The site was surveyed with GPS and then GIS utility locations were used to create 30-foot buffers from any infrastructure on-site.

Berta said this will minimize any impact on root systems if work needs to be performed on underground utilities and will reduce…