STOCKTON GARDEN CLUB
PENNY PINES
Our Club regularly contributes $68 to a Penny Pines plantation program covering part of the costs of planting replacement trees indigenous to a particular damaged area, whether by fire or by other natural catastrophes. The forestry service provides the plantation the same protection from fires, harmful insects and disease given other forested areas. These plantations provide soil and watershed protection, soil stabilization, future harvest-able timber as well as beauty, shade and habitat for birds and insects.
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There are 350 trees in one plantation. Through February 2023, we have purchased 366 plantations, which totals 128,100 trees!
HISTORY:
In 1941, California’s first Penny Pines plantation was sponsored by the San Francisco Sportswomen’s Association. Recognizing the great need to restore devastated forest areas, the association sent their donation to the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in northern California.
California Garden Club Inc. adopted Penny Pines as a state project in 1957. In 1964, the original cooperative agreement was rewritten to provide that funds contributed under the Penny Pines program be used for reforestation, rather than solely for purchasing seedlings. Then in 1999 The National Garden Club and the USDA Forest Service formed a partnership sustaining our National and Urban Forests through this reforestation/forest education program.
Over the years more than a million dollars has been contributed to the Penny Pines Reforestation Program and more than 27 million seedlings have been planted, renewing 88,000 acres of national forest land in California –truly an outstanding achievement.