The sight of 50+ volunteers, community leaders, and City employees planting trees on Saturday was truly inspirational! We successfully planted 31 Chinese Elms, Weeping Willows, Paperbark Tea Trees, and Gingkos along with 9 Arroyo Willows. All together in the past 2+ years, volunteers have planted 97 trees and 37 shrubs at Martin Luther King Park. Amazing! This proves that when we are aligned with a vision and working together, we can achieve much more than one would ever think possible.

Saturday’s volunteers included Cub Scouts, grandmothers, parents, a City Councilwoman, teenagers, our City Manager, tree-lovers, and even some recent new residents of Sausalito! We even inspired some folks from Oakland, Corte Madera and Mill Valley to help. You were all enthusiastic and uncomplaining, while achieving an amazing planting feat in difficult soils. I hope you enjoyed working outside, working with the soil, meeting your neighbors, and perhaps even making some new friends.

Kudos to our fearless team leaders of Bill Hynes, Greg Thomson, Jake Karger, Jill Hoffman and Morgan Pierce. Thank you for making sure that all the volunteers were engaged and having fun, while giving these trees the best possible chance of growing large and leafy.

The City of Sausalito Landscape team of Kent Basso, Dave Raffo, Jason Finch, and Oscar Lucario also deserve tremendous thanks. Their knowledge of horticulture and Sausalito’s local conditions ensured that the tree planting was set up for success. On Saturday, they contributed both their brains and brawn whenever and wherever it was needed.

Finally, thank you to the entire community who has supported Sausalito Beautiful over the past seven years.  Whether you show up on planting days, donate money to pay for trees, or simply help raise awareness amongst city leaders—you inspire us all to do even more!

Future generations will be eternally grateful that you have foresight to help maintain and improve Sausalito’s public green spaces.

For more information including photos, see the MLK Park Tree Project page and and the Marin Independent Journal article on the planting day.