Trees of Triumph

Ms. Brandt’s Landscape and Greenhouse Management class started planting trees on October 1st. The trees are to be placed around the outside of the main baseball field eight feet apart from each other for every fence panel.

We asked the head of operations, Ms. Brandt, on what type of trees are being planted. “We are planting Black Hills Spruce, because they have the right diameter and they’re more disease resistant where we live.” Also we asked her what is the purpose of the trees being planted where they are? “The purpose of the trees there, is to serve as a wind block around the outside of the baseball park for when they have baseball games.”

Dylan Lund was one of the team members that contributed to the planting of the trees. We got to ask him how much did all the trees cost. “Well, each of them was about $130, so like $5,900 total including a chain we had to buy.” I also asked him what were some of the challenges of this project? “The dirt you could tell was packed down hard, so hand digging it took forever. Then once we got the holes dug, we had to carefully place the trees in the hole without having them leaning sideways. And finally, the last problem we encountered was our ratchet straps broke. We had Landon Depew and Stuart Hartley make a trip to Running’s to buy an Ag. chain, this fixed our problem.”

Since October 1st, the students have made amazing progress on the project, even by working from 8-12 a.m. last Saturday. Admittedly, there were quite a few trees left over, and when asked what the plan for them would be, Ms. Brandt said she wasn’t sure just yet.