Thursday, August 16, 2007
1:00- 2:00pm EST

Operating a nursery, community garden, or small arboretum can enhance your organization's programming and, in some cases, provide unrestricted revenue to support your mission. Establishing and sustaining such an operation requires substantial commitment. Learn more about the challenges of site management, the business assumptions that sustain operations, and how these sites are used to enhance public education and outreach.

Trainers:
Mike Bradshaw, Interim Executive Director, Texas Trees Foundation (Dallas, TX)
Glenda Daniel, Urban Greening Director, Openlands (Chicago, IL)

In 2002 TXU provided $140,000 in funding and 360 volunteers to create the nation's largest-known urban tree farm, operated by Texas Trees Foundation. The four-acre TXU Urban Tree Farm at Richland College features state-of-the-art production and irrigation technology with the capacity to produce 7,000 ten-gallon trees per planting season. Trees are offered to the public through the Trees For Texas program. In order to meet community needs and provide income to the foundation, in 2005 the Foundation opened a $350,000 ten-acre Hamilton Park Tree Farm in a remote parking lot of Texas Instruments. The site is ideally suited for above-ground growing of the larger, twenty-gallon trees. It is covered with asphalt, drains well, is in close proximity to water, and is fenced and secure.

Openlands runs an educational arboretum that teaches about trees through multi-divisional curriculum (math, science, social studies, language arts, etc.). There are 50 active teachers with the program, and several hundred that use the resources. The Arboretum is maintained by Openlands' TreeKeeper volunteers. As a next step, the arboretum will be expanding to a public walk focusing on native, shade, and ornamental trees. The project came about because Openlands didn't have a site of their own. Previously they were helping others community gardens to thrive, but now they have a permanent place in which to stage programs.

Brown Bag attendees will learn:
* Successes and challenges.
* Integrating education, volunteers, and training into the program.
* Achieving financial and capacity sustainability.
* Engaging funding partners.

Complete the following information to register for this month's Brown Bag Series discussion. The URL, call-in details, and event reminders will be emailed to you.