It is the mission of Replant New Orleans to provide trees and shrubs, healthy soil, and education outreach services to the residents of New Orleans at no cost. We seek to help New Orleanians create a lush, healthy, and vibrant urban forest canopy, emphasizing equitable distribution of resources and grassroots community involvement.

Urban Trees:

• Reduce air pollution
• Counterbalance the greenhouse effect
• Conserve water and reduce soil erosion
• Save energy
• Increase economic stability
• Reduce noise pollution
• Create wildlife and plant diversity

Replant New Orleans focuses on providing outdoor, native species of trees to residents who lost vegetation during the flooding following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  Our list of available trees includes a wide variety of food producing trees, such as figs, pears, mangos, and multiple species of citrus, as well as oaks, magnolias, cypress, and crepe myrtles.  By making many types of trees available, Replant New Orleans is able to meet several goals simultaneously.  We fulfill the requests of residents who desire specific trees, we encourage food security by planting multiple food producing species over a wide area, and we make a noticable impact by encouraging the people of New Orleans to work together to plant mulitple trees at one time.  As well, the environmental benefits of having a full urban forest canopy are enormous.

How our program works:

Replant New Orleans uses grants and donations received to provide free trees to the residents of New Orleans.  This funding also enables us to teach workshops and help develop composting programs throughout the city.  Our tree planting program is structured to provide trees to groups of residents who have organized themselves on a block-by-block or a neighborhood basis.  This allows us to effectively provide trees, volunteer labor, and information outreach in an efficient manner, and allows neighborhoods to make a large positive change in a short period of time.  While we want to provide trees to as many people as possible, it is difficult to provide trees to individuals every day of the week.  We encourage folks who want trees from Replant New Orleans to organize their neighbors and have a tree count in mind before contacting us.  Please see the Neighborhood Tree Planting Program under the Projects link for more details on our tree planting program.

As the program grows and our funding increases, we will be able to provide our services to communities outside of New Orleans to the immediately surrounding parishes.  For the present, we are focusing our efforts in Orleans Parish.

Our workshops and composting programs are available in a wide variety of settings.  Workshops may be taught in schools, churches, parks, neighborhood association meetings, and homes.  The composting program is flexible and can be modified to accomodate the needs of a wide variety of participants and locations. 

Compost and soil health

In addition to our Neighborhood Tree Planting Project, we are developing a Compost Cooperative program which will address the important issues of soil pollution and depletion in our city.  Most people know that compost can be used as a natural fertilizer for plants because it contains many nutrients, but unlike non-organic fertilizers, compost actually repairs the structure of imbalanced soil.  When compost is regularly worked into soil the aeration (airflow) is improved, water is more efficiently absorbed and retained, and soil pH levels are balanced. This means that compost treated soil is neither particularly susceptible to erosion or drought, and that healthy vegetation will grow because of the favorable soil conditions which make present nutrients available for the plants to use.

Another important aspect of compost is its beneficial effect on polluted soil. Bioremediation, the process of treating contaminated soil with organic additives such as compost, is a safe, accessible, and reliable process. According to EPA findings, bioremediation with the use of compost is an effective means to treat soil contaminated with Semi-Volatile and Volatile Organic Compounds, Poly-Aromatic Hydrocarbons, and explosives. It also has to ability to bind to heavy metals, rendering them inert and therefore unable to travel to water sources. In addition, compost prevents heavy metals from being absorbed into plants, which is extremely important because without this kind of soil remediation, any vegetables that we manage to grow in our backyards are likely to contain unhealthy levels of lead. For more information about compost please read our building healthy soil page.

For more information about contaminants in soil, water, and sediment in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, please read What's in the soil?

For more information on having your soil tested, please visit the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center (LSU AgCenter) website at www.agctr.lsu.edu.

Projects and Partners

Replant New Orleans' projects and programs have been developed in collaboration with several groups to reach the greatest number of people in the most effective manner possible:

We work with the People's Environmental Center and the LSU AgCenter to provide soil testing services for a nominal fee.

We also work with the New Orleans Food & Farm Network to create education outreach opportunities and training programs, as well as promote food security by planting food producing trees.

Our healthy soils programs are greatly aided by consulting from Groundwork New Orleans.

Many of our trees have been provided by a donation from Hike for KaTREEna.

Thank You!

Thank you for supporting Replant New Orleans!

Sincerely,

Theo Eliezer, Executive Director
Replant New Orleans

Replant New Orleans is a 501c3 tax exempt public charity in accordance with Louisiana state law.  80% of donated monies go to programs, and 20% to administrative costs.