PARKMAN – The McKusick School is the first of five schools in central Maine that will participate in the Kids and Trees Growing Together program, sponsored by the Natural Resource Education Center in Greenville.

On March 29, members of the center will help the children plant the seeds, the first of many steps in a program that will continue throughout their school years. The seeds will grow into seedlings, be replanted and eventually grow into Christmas trees.

The object of the project is to introduce all the pupils to a forest environment in an objective setting. Starting with the seed planting in first grade, each class will have a task to perform. The trees will be ready to harvest when the pupils are ready to graduate from high school.

Through the years, the pupils will keep records of the trees, their growth and needs, and the costs incurred. Proceeds from the sale of the trees will be directed toward continuation of the project, with extra funds available for the class to use as it wishes.

The seed-planting step is first in a multistage program. The seeds must be planted and nurtured for two to three years before they can be planted at a tree farm on Milo Road in Dover-Foxcroft. Stephen Law, a retired civil engineer with the U.S. Forest Service, who conceived the idea for the program, and his family have donated 35 acres for the program.

In late April or early May, the school district will bus third-grade pupils to the tree farm where they will lay out a planting grid in a prepared transplant bed and then transplant 100 2-year-old seedlings from trays to the bed. In the fall, the pupils will gather seeds for the next class to plant and the cycle will begin next spring again.

NREC has entered into a partnership with Hall’s Christmas Tree Farm that will provide technical guidance for site preparation.

Law said that in each of the forests where he worked with the U.S. Forest Service he ran into the same problem over and over again-the conflict between forest landowners and forest users. Recognizing that the problem is becoming greater every year, not just in other states, but also here in Maine, Law tried to figure out what he could do to help resolve the conflict.

Teaching children about forest management, he felt, was a good first step toward that goal.