You may remember that our trees took a bit of a beating during the Christmas ice storm. So you can imagine that I did a double take when driving home on Friday I heard the words, “Lowes is giving away free trees this Saturday” come out of my radio. Free trees? Even better, I didn’t hear any words like “conditions apply” or “minimum purchase required.”
I walked in the house said something like, “Free trees!” to Matt and then dashed to my computer to look up the details.
It was true! Lowes was giving away 2,000 trees. And one of the locations was our local store.
The giveaway was called Project Replant, and the idea was to “help rebuild some of the tree canopy lost in … the ice storm.”
The giveaway started at 9:30, but I wanted to be absolutely sure I got a tree, so I got to the store 45 minutes early. Twenty-six other keeners were already lined up in front of me. About a half hour later, Matt arrived and joined the end of the line. Yay, another much needed tree!
There were coffee and hot chocolate and donuts and great camaraderie amongst the people in the line. The Lowes staff kept the hot drinks flowing and walked the line chatting with people. When the trees were finally wheeled out, I thought that people were going to cheer. They were 1 gallon red maples, about 4-5 ft. tall, and normally cost $30 each. But Saturday they were free!
And Sunday they were in the ground.
Our poor willow beside the driveway took such a beating over the winter and a tree-lined driveway is one of my big wants, so one tree went there.
On the turnaround our big maple only lost a few branches, but it looks so fragile and old that I’m not sure how much longer it will last, so we decided we’d better get a new tree started sooner rather than later. (Especially since the new trees are so small. In the photo below, you can see the metal stake that we used to keep the tree straight better than the tree itself).
Small or not, the trees are so nice to have. Thank you, Lowes.
Did anyone else get anything free this weekend? Did you do any gardening? Any tips to help our trees get established and make sure they survive?
Home on 129 Acres 
That’s cool! We have a lot of fairly old rock maples in our side garden, which provide a screen along our fence from the neighboring restaurant parking lot. They’ve suffered from storms, including Hurricane Sandy, as well as trimming by the restaurant people. Every spring there are countless seedlings sprouting. We’ve left many of these to grow, and we’re nurturing a dozen or so saplings (from 2 to 8 feet high) as replacement trees, that will hopefully keep thriving long after we’re gone.
Too funny. We’re doing the same thing with various sprouts in our gardens too, crossing our fingers that they’ll grow into actual trees some day. It’s neat to think how long these trees will be here… well after us.
Julia my tip for healthy trees that will survive the first year….. water them. Take a pail of water out to them every other day for the next four months
Thanks for the tip. We will definitely be carting pails as we don’t have enough hose to reach all the way down the driveway!
I heard from our city to make sure to water trees very well for the first 2 springs/summers/falls until their root system are established. Yay for more trees! 🙂
We’ll make sure to do that.
How lovely to get free trees! When I was a kid we had a HUGE willow tree in our backyard that my mum grew from a cutting, just like a plant. I guess you can do that with willows. She cut a long twig and put it in a four litre milk jug over the winter, and it seemed like it just froze and that was the end of that. But in the spring it thawed and grew roots, and she planted it in the garden, where it reigns over that backyard still. (They no longer live there, but you can see it from the nearby highway.) So that’s another way to get a free tree. 🙂
Thanks for the tip. Our willows seem to have lots of shoots around the base so I wondered if that might work. How nice that the tree is still standing.
I so badly wish I lived close enough to get one of these bad boys! Lucky you 🙂 I thought it was such a lovely thing that Lowes did, and I’m glad you got to take advantage of it!
Lovely is a great word to describe it.