Giving Focus: April Showers Bring May Seedlings

Community/Giving  |  5 years ago

CedarWorks is committed to making a healthier world for children. To that end, our giving programs focus on children and the environment. We donate to many child-focused or environmentally focused organizations in Maine, but one of our sometimes overlooked giving programs is the CedarWorks ReCedaring program.

Northern White Cedar is what we use to make all of our outdoor playsets and playhouses, and it is native to Maine, so every year in May we donate Northern White Cedar seedlings to small woodlot owners and environmental organizations in the state. Over the years we have given over 500,000 seedlings away. That’s enough to reforest the entire country of Monaco (if Monaco actually wanted to be reforested).

Many of the seedlings get picked up by woodlot owners who use them on their lots, but others get used for special environmental projects. Project Canopy is a project of the Maine Forest Service. Every year we provide seedlings for them to give away at an annual Arbor Day event. Another organization, a farm trust near us, used the seedlings in a plant sale fundraiser for the farm.

Our biggest recipient every year is in Aroostook County, the northernmost county in Maine, bordering Canada. This year we shipped 15,000 seedlings directly to the Upper St. John River Organization there. That organization works with several different conservation partners such as the Aroostook County Conservation Association to plant the donated seedlings throughout the St. John Valley and Aroostook County as Northern White Cedar is a focus of those organizations’ conservation and wildlife habitat and water quality enhancement efforts. Since 2015, we have donated almost 60,000 seedlings to be replanted in the St John Valley. We are happy to partner with them knowing that the seedlings will be replanted in a habitat where they can thrive as an important part of the ecosystem.

We believe that taking care of our environment is one of the best ways to take care of our kids, so we are happy to invest in the ReCedaring program every spring.