Up With Trees

[MichaelC]

Up With Trees to mark 30 year anniversary.

From Tulsa World

"In 1974, when 51st Street was widened to four lanes, construction crews had to cut down a beautiful stand of mature oak trees.

An indignant high school student called Sid Patterson, Tulsa's street commissioner at the time, to ask what the city planned to do about replacing those trees.

Nothing, Patterson said. Tulsa didn't have the money or the manpower to plant trees.

But that phone call lingered on Patterson's mind, and he eventually organized a meeting of members of the Tulsa Garden Club, landscape architects and officials from several local civic organizations.

Formed in 1976, the group took the name Up With Trees, now ready to celebrate its 30th anniversary with a banquet Thursday at the Downtown Doubletree Hotel.

Over the past three decades, the group has planted more than 18,500 trees at more than 400 sites along Tulsa highways and major thoroughfares -- all with volunteer labor and private donations."