Project to replant Christmas trees after Valley fire takes off

A grassroots effort to bring some extra greenery to Valley fire victims has taken off, said Kathy Blair of Cobb, who organized the gift-a-tree project.

Blair believes some 400 Christmas trees could be replanted after the holidays, thanks to North Bay families who opted to buy potted trees over cut ones. After the holidays, families can return the trees to the nurseries where they bought them, and Blair and her family members will pick them up.

Prickett’s Nursery in Santa Rosa and Healdsburg sold 150 potted trees to people interested in helping with the project, owner David Kinney said.

“It was really a terrific program and we’d be happy to do it again next year because it’s going to be a continued rebuilding thing,” he said during a Christmas Eve phone call. “We’d like to work with the women who sponsored it, so we can make sure we have more native trees.”

Blair and her sister Chris Hurley of Santa Rosa started the campaign after local nurseries had already made their tree orders, so nursery owners, while thrilled with the idea, were caught a little off guard.

Cloverdale Nursery nearly sold out of potted trees, and Cottage Gardens in Petaluma did.

“We really don’t do much in the way of living Christmas trees,” said Bruce Shanks, Cottage Gardens owner. “We have brought in Alberta spruces, which are really more like tabletop plants, but the response was overwhelming, and it had legs. And it wasn’t just the weekend article; it went on for several weeks afterward.”

Shanks said that, in the end, about 100 people called who were interested in participating.

“I mean, it was really kind of impressive,” he said.

Back in October, Blair said, she went to a meeting at Cobb Elementary school where a forester explained that about 7 million trees were lost in the blaze.

Another forester, Kimberley Sone, who works with Cal Fire, confirmed that number. The calculation works like this: There were about 100 trees per acre, and more than 77,000 acres burned.

Originally, Blair’s goal was to get 50 trees - maybe. Clearly, she underestimated.

“I had a guy who lives in L.A., and he’s coming up to Santa Rosa for the holidays, and he wanted to bring a tree up,” she said. “I had people all over the South Bay and the East Bay asking if nurseries near them were participating.”

In the end, 13 North Bay nurseries got involved.

A kindergarten class from the Santa Rosa French-American School participated, too, buying a potted tree with parent donations, Blair said.

Blair said she has a list of 50 Valley fire victims who are interested in receiving trees. Because she won’t be doing tree pickups until the first two weekends of January, though, Blair encouraged people to contact her at 972-2084 or georgiablairs@mchsi.com if they’re still interested in giving or receiving a tree. (To view a Facebook page devoted to the effort, click here.)

Wary of having to act as Santa Claus in reverse, picking up trees from hundreds of houses, she asks just one thing:

“If there’s any way they can take the trees back to the nursery, that would be really helpful.”

You can reach Staff Writer Christi Warren at 521-5205 or christi.warren@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @SeaWarren.