Developer David Bagwell relates a story from his youth about planting acorns with his father in his mother’s mint bed beneath the dripping faucet outside her kitchen window. When they came up the next spring, he and his dad transplanted them in the front yard. The little seedlings took off, and, as Bagwell mowed the yard each summer, he got to admire both their growth and appreciate the shade they came to provide.

“In looking back,” he says, “I see that starting small and experiencing the steady growth of those red oaks was a big part of what held my interest and provides me today such fond memories of time with my dad.”

The turnout for last year’s Free Tree Jamboree was so great that for this year’s event Bagwell is low on medium size starter trees, which are usually two to three years old and 18 inches or more tall. But, he has lots of one-year-old trees that he started from seed last fall after he nearly ran out last year.

“Our babies will do better if someone will adopt and plant them than if we overwinter them and get another year’s growth in our nursery before giving them away at next year’s Free Tree Jamboree,” he says. So, attendees at this year’s Free Tree Jamboree could wait until next year when the babies that Bagwell has available now are bigger, or they can take over their care now and be sitting in the shade sooner than if they were left in Bagwell’s foster care.

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