Ancient Coast Redwood
Dear Friends,
Here’s what’s happened with the Moving the Giants project that you first read about in the Seattle Times and other area newspapers this summer.
- We now have 2000 Coast Redwood saplings and Giant Sequoia seedlings at the Seattle Parks greenhouse – see details below.
- We are starting a nonprofit whose mission is to propagate and plant many more thousands if not millions of redwoods and sequoias in the Pacific Northwest.
- The purpose of the nonprofit would be to support a “community of action” — the people across the Pacific Northwest who want to pursue this mission. That is, people who want to produce trees (by cloning or from seed), people who want to find the right places to plant them, those who want to dig holes and put these trees in the ground, and people with ideas and energy to pursue this mission in other ways. One example of this “community of action” (in action) was the recent work of a group of volunteers in repotting 1000 root-bound sequoia seedlings into 1-gallon pots after the trees arrived in Seattle.
- In December we received 1700 sequoia seedlings and 300 redwood saplings from Archangel Ancient Tree Archive which are housed at the Seattle Parks greenhouse/nursery. Photos of these trees can be viewed here.
- These 1700 seedlings and 300 saplings that arrived in December will be kept at the Seattle Parks Department greenhouse/nursery for several months or even a year or more so they have a chance to adjust and grow. These trees have lived their entire lives indoors in a Michigan warehouse with artificial lighting, heating (70 degrees) and humidity. This is their first experience of natural light and variable temperature and humidity. (More details below).
- The 100 (6-16’ tall) living archive redwood trees are stuck in Michigan until Spring 2019 due to the stringent requirements for them to be certified free of Japanese beetle larva. And even then, there is no certainty that they will be able to make their way to the West coast.
- For the reasons described above, these redwoods and sequoias cannot be made available at this time. Please know that I am determined to do my best on behalf of the trees and the people that want to plant them. I hope you’ll hang in there and stay in touch. We’ll let you know when the trees are ready for planting.
For more details about the trees and this project, you can go to the Updates page on this website. Lots of information is already posted there. As soon as new information becomes available, it will be posted there for you to see.
For photos of the trees that Archangel shipped to Seattle in November/December, go to the Tree Photos page.
For those who are wondering if your property is suitable for planting a Coast redwood or Giant sequoia, go to the Documents page to read the CHECKLIST and GUIDELINES information.
Philip Stielstra