After a year off, the Soil and Water Conservation District taking orders

Right now, most people are probably more concerned about snow and ice than they are spring planting. However, for those looking to improve their land with trees and shrubbery, the Lawrence Soil and Water Conservation District is once again having their annual sale and taking orders until Feb. 10.

“We weren’t able to do this last year,” said Kimberly Carrico, urban/education specialist for the agency, citing the same reason as why so much was shut down in 2021 — concern about COVID-19. “But we are happy to be doing this again. Last year was the first year we hadn’t done the tree sales in 30-plus years.”

They’ve got a variety of trees including Black Cherry, Black Walnut, Northern Red Oak, White Oak, Sugar Maple, Bald Cypress, Eastern Red Cedar, Eastern White Pine, Norway Spruce, Virginia Pine, American Elderberry, Butternut, Hazelnut, PawPaw, Persimmon, American Plum, Black Locust, Eastern Redbud, Sourwood, Tulip and Dwarf Bartlett Pear.
Carrico said that most of their customers are landowners and the most popular tree is the Eastern White Pine.

“We get people who are looking for erosion control,” she said. “They will come in and buy the Eastern White Pines for their farms to help stop erosion. But it isn’t just farmers or people in the rural area, we get people from Coal Grove, from Ironton, from all over the county.”

And they offer more than just trees. People can buy kits to grow their own Shitake mushrooms.

Also available for order are various seed mixes. Some create food plots for wildlife or bees, one to help control erosion, another is a mix of native wildflowers and grass and two mixes for native groundcover.

Carrico said that after they posted about the sale on their Facebook page, the seed mix to attract bees started getting a strong response after local beekeeper Margaret Reid, of Willow Wood, noticed it.

“Ms. Reid asked to make the page sharable and then a lot of the bee pollinators came on there because of the Ohio pollinator seed mix,” Carrico said.

And it isn’t just landowners that get trees.

The Lawrence Soil and Water Conservation District has long had a program to give all second graders in the county a tree for them to plant at home.

“We do it on Arbor Day and we normally contact the schools and see if they are interested,” Carrico said. The trees are free to the students, either paid for by a donation from TransCanada or by the district. They are distributed to the schools with help from the Juvenile Program Community Services. “We do a little presentation for the students if the teacher wants to do that. But each student gets an Eastern White Pine sapling that they can take home and plant wherever they want.”

Delivery date for the plants is April 8.

For information, call 740-867-4737. A brochure can be found at www.lawrenceswcd.com or picked up at the Lawrence SWCD Office in Linnville, 5459 St. Rt. 217, Willow Wood.