The Woodbridge Land Trust planted their Calistro tree harvest at the Town's Fitzgerald property on Beecher Road. The Amity Observer captured the event in this fantastic article appearing April 26th.
At the Tuesday May 9th May meeting of the TACF-CT Board, Robert Gregg described the publicity regarding the recent planting of chestnuts from a backcross with Joe Calistro's American Chestnut tree in Woodbridge. On April 21, 2006, Philip Arnold, Robert Gregg, Joe Calistro, Robert Fries and other volunteers planted the chestnuts with a local paper, The Amity Observer, and Channel 12 in attendance. This resulted in an across the front page spread with a picture and a story of TACF's role in bringing back the American Chestnut.
The following week Beecher Elementary students walked to the site for a short talk by Dr. Arnold followed by a question and answer session when the students peppered him with questions that he handled skillfully. The students came in three groups accompanied by several parents, teachers and administrators. It was heartening to see the enthusiasm of the students and the supervisor had to cut off the questions when it came time to go back to school.
Reporters and cameramen from three newspapers and channel 12 were there for this school event. Again we had a front page spread with a picture. Gregg pointed out that personal contact with media representatives led to this result. This favorable publicity can benefit TACF and help in accomplishing our goals. We need more of it. One direct result was that Joe Calistro was given the location of three chestnut trees in Woodbridge that we did not know about. We shall check them out as possible mother trees.
TACF has a well developed program for schools that should be used even more widely than it is now being used. Laurence Grotheer is the Woodbridge Land Trust's chestnut emissary to Beecher School and he made arrangements with the administration and science section and gave them TACF material. Many of the students had logged on to www.charliechestnut.org and some of them had had their parents bring them to the site even before the school visit.
Robert Gregg had given out to the media a 10 page brief that he had written or copied from TACF publications so that the story line in the papers was fairly accurate. Copies of this brief, together with photocopies of the front page spreads, was given to each attendee at the TACF-CT meeting.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006, Robert Gregg gave a progress report on the Woodbridge Chestnut nursery to the Board of Selectmen of the Town of Woodbridge. It was well received with kind remarks from members of the Board. The presentation was an expansion of the remarks made at the TACF-CT Board meeting with emphasis on education. The same newspaper reports and information brief were given to the Selectmen as were given to our board members.
To learn more about the Land Trust's efforts, contact Directors Phil Arnold or Robert Gregg.
