Brenna Kelly and John Moyer plant a redbud tree during a service day with Replanting Apison, a project to help restore the landscapes devastated by the April 27, 2011, tornadoes, on Saturday in Apison. Led by project manager Mariah Prescott, the project brought around 80 volunteers together to plant 250 native trees.Around 70 volunteers worked Saturday morning to undo the scars of the April 2011 tornadoes.
“When you drive around Apison and Ringgold, it seems like everything is back to normal except the trees,” Mariah Prescott said.
She heads up the Replant Apison project, which aims to plant hundreds of trees in the path of bent, broken and dead ones left by the 2011 tornado that hit Apison and surrounding areas. She got the idea from her friend, Erica Lewis, who started a similar project in Ringgold, Ga.
In four hours, Prescott said volunteers planted 225 young trees, ranging between 5 and 6 feet tall. All the trees were donated to the project, and they included native Tennessee species such as dogwood, red maple and red oak.
Gene Hyde, urban forester for Chattanooga, went out with the group. He said replanting where the trees were so devastated has many practical benefits — energy reduction, stormwater interception and pollution reduction, for instance.