Lone Tree Hill Voluteer Day 2024

By Radha Iyengar

On Saturday, April 27, a glorious sunny day, the Belmont Citizens Forum (BCF), in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its 10th annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day The volunteers included Girl Scouts Troop 82339, Cityside Subaru employees, and citizens from Belmont and the surrounding communities.

Many hands made light work. At the Meadow Edge Trail, volunteers removed garlic mustard and planted 40 white pine saplings. In a few years, the trees planted will be a greenery screen for the houses on Summit Road.

At the other end of the property, the volunteers collected 11 bags of garlic mustard and a total of 20 bags of trash (10 bags of trash were disposed of in the Cityside Subaru dumpster).

BCF is grateful to David Ropes, Shawn, Seth and Cole of Tree Specialists, Inc. for supervising the planting, and the Judy Record Conservation Fund for funding their ongoing work and purchasing the saplings. And a big shout-out goes to Joe Hibbard for suggesting this white pine planting project and marking the planting location ahead of the Volunteer Day, to Nancy Kougeas for obtaining permission from the Woodland Trustees so that Tree Specialist could park their trucks on Summit Road, to Leonard Katz and Art Kreiger (Belmont Conservation Volunteers) for supervising the removal of the invasives, to Vincent Stanton, Jr. and Dean Hickman for supervising the Cityside Subaru volunteers picking up trash, to Anna Churchill for signing in volunteers at the bottom of Coal Road, to Scott McCue, Erika Harimoto and Hannah Fletcher for sending Habitat volunteers to help with the tree planting, to Jay Marcotte, DPW director, and his staff, for picking up the trash bags.

It took a village to have a successful volunteer day.

Radha Iyengar is treasurer of Belmont Citizens Forum and organizer of the BCF Volunteer Day.