“It’s just stuff, it’s all replaceable,” folks said after the March 31 tornado destroyed their homes and properties earlier this year, a sentiment that expressed gratefulness that no human lives were lost in the disaster.  Animal lives were lost, however, and perhaps often overlooked, so were the lives of trees.

Melanie Schweitzer felt the loss of her trees after the tornado tore through the property owned by her and husband Mike, narrowly missing their house in Wellman.  What had been a lush and shaded area of their backyard became a debris field that took days to clean up with the generous help of others.  

Being a landscape designer, who provides services through her business, Flora, Schweitzer was able to plant new trees in the newly bare places already this spring, but she could see her neighbors weren’t able to do the same.  She so appreciated the help she received from others after the storm that she wanted to pay it forward; in terms of how she might do that, she thought, “I can plant trees.  Let’s try and raise some money and plant trees for people who lost them.”

The end result of that thought is the New Roots Music Festival and Tornado Fundraiser on Sunday, July 16 from 4-7 p.m. at the Wellman bandshell.  Bad Angle Events helped Schweitzer round up the Young Ramblers, Ryne Doughty, and Old Man Band to perform, and food and drinks will be available for purchase.  Freewill donations will go toward purchasing and planting trees at seven tornado-damaged homesteads in Washington County.

“It’s really a loss I feel pretty significantly,” Schweitzer says of her mature trees.  They provided shade and a windbreak, never mind their air-cleaning, carbon-storing, anxiety-relieving superpowers.  “It’s almost a mourning,” she admits.

Schweitzer hopes to raise $2000 per homestead, which would purchase 10 shade and windbreak trees at wholesale, which volunteers would help plant this fall.  She’s created shortlists of evergreens and shade trees that would best stand up to the environmental conditions they’ll have to tolerate, such as exposure to herbicides from farming, deer grazing, and drought.  With a little luck, in five to 10 years, trees like white pine or Norway spruce, gingko or river birch, will have grown enough to fill the void.

Thinking about trees comes easily to Schweitzer, putting on a fundraiser, less so.  “It’s a lot more involved than I ever could have figured,” she says.

So that donations made can be tax-deductible, Schweitzer partnered with Trees Forever, an Iowa-based 501(c)3 charitable organization that facilitates tree planting grants for communities, which has set up an account to receive donations.  From there, funds will transfer to the Wellman Rotary, which has experience in fundraising and will distribute the funds.  

To identify families who could use help with tree replacement, Schweitzer turned to Marissa Reisen, the Washington County Emergency Management Coordinator, who reached out to those with tornado-damaged properties.

It is interesting to note that most insurance policies for homes and farms do not cover the cost of tree removal or replacement.  It costs thousands of dollars to plant a few new trees, tens of thousands of dollars to bring in backhoes and bulldozers to remove those downed by a storm.  

As Schweitzer recognizes, it means a lot when a community helps with recovery after a disaster.  

“People were [generous] with their time to help us clean up.  We had a lot of people out there helping us walk the fields and clean up the yard,” Schweitzer says.  “We just feel like we want to be able to return that favor in some way.”

If you can’t make the New Roots Music Festival and Tornado Fundraiser on Sunday, July 16 from 4-7 p.m. at the Wellman bandshell, donations can be made to secure.givelively.org, or checks can be mailed to Trees Forever, 80 W. 8th Ave., Marion, IA 52302 (include Washington County Tornado Tree Restoration in the memo line).  

If you would like to help with tree planting this fall, contact Melanie Schweitzer at 319-631-5328 or melanie@farmfreshflora.com.