A Good Day For Trees

Arbor Day is nearly a month away, but you wouldn't have known it by the pockets of people spread out around Santa Rosa on Saturday planting street trees to liven up the city and add some greenery to the scene.

A total of 93 young trees were headed to new homes along several streets mostly downtown, as well as on Stony Point Road, said Howard Wilson, a member of the city's tree crew.

Part of what's become an annual commitment by the folks at Winzler & Kelly Consulting Engineers, the planting involved dozens of volunteers associated with the civil engineering firm, and included about nine Junior Girl Scouts from Santa Rosa's Troop No. 57.

It's the fifth year the civil engineering firm's employees and their friends and families have pitched in. Wilson said 50 or 60 people turned out Saturday.

"You definitely get some satisfaction in walking through the city later and saying, 'I planted that tree,' " civil engineer Rocky Vogler said as he finished up some planting on Orchard Street downtown.

"We really enjoy doing it," said Rick Guggiana, whose 7-year-old son, Marc, was helping out.

The fifth- and sixth-grade Girl Scouts, led by Winzler & Kelly assistant project manager Elissa Overton, had fun with it too, even as they earned credit toward a community service award.

"We get to work for our friends, and it's good for the environment," sixth-grader Sierra Overton said.

They had been part of a group that gathered on a particularly troublesome stretch of Mendocino Avenue near Fifth Street to replace seven saplings that had been severed by vandals during the past year.

City personnel hope larger trees planted this year will endure.

Later, at Seventh and Humboldt streets, the scouts laughed and chatted, several explaining that the day's work was just an extension of the gardening work and tree planting they do at home.

A few yards down, some others in the troop were struggling with shovels to broaden a hole through some hard-packed soil and tangled old roots.

The girls there, mostly fifth-graders, said they already had planted two trees, both of them named.

One was Aphrodite, Greek goddess of beauty and love. The other was C.E.M., three of the girls' first initials.

The one they were preparing to plant was Florence, named after their 6-year-old pen pal in Zambia, a child whose hardships they're trying to soften with their support.

Their struggle with the hole made them think of her, the scouts said.

"If she goes through the hard conditions, and she doesn't complain," St. Eugene's student Milena Duarte said, "we can do this, too."

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249

or mary.callahan@

pressdemocrat.com.