One Boulder couple’s response to climate change: Grow trees, lots of trees, and give them away

The last redbud sapling disappeared just before noon. A man eased the seedling into the back seat of his Subaru, closed the door carefully and waved goodbye. Minutes earlier, hundreds of young trees covered folding tables outside Elizabeth Black and Christopher Brown’s home in north Boulder. By lunchtime, only empty trays remained.

Across Boulder County, these seedlings would soon take root in backyards, along fence lines, beside swing sets and on small-acreage properties. Some would thrive, some wouldn’t. Most would grow in places Black and Brown would never see.

For the couple, this summer began like every summer has for nearly two decades.

Since 2007, Black has grown and given away 12,068 tree and shrub seedlings, free to anyone willing to plant them. This year’s giveaway was her largest yet, with 1,098 seedlings distributed over two weekends. Every year, Black collects seed, nurtures thousands of tiny trees through Colorado’s unpredictable weather and opens her property to neighbors looking to take home a tree.

During those same years, Colorado’s forests have endured some of the greatest challenges in modern history. Bark beetles spread across millions of forested acres and prolonged drought weakened forests statewide. Wildfires such as Hayman, High Park, Cameron Peak and East Troublesome rapidly transformed entire landscapes and communities.

Black never imagined a few thousand seedlings could undo any of that, but that was never the point. She isn’t a forester, nor does she work for a conservation organization. She isn’t trying to persuade anyone to change their politics or lifestyle. She likes gardening, and she likes solving problems.

Black and Brown had built their lives around landscapes. They met in the 1980s as Colorado River guides, exploring the West by boat and on foot, then turning that relationship with the natural world into art. Brown photographed the landscapes they encountered; Black painted them. They spent decades learning to notice the details of places most people might pass by. Then, in 2007, like millions of Americans, Black and Brown watched “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Released the year before, the Academy Award-winning documentary ended with a surprisingly simple list of actions ordinary people could take to combat climate change. One suggestion in particular stayed with Black: Plant trees. Lots and lots of trees. 

She remembers thinking, “OK. I can do that.”

By then, much of their 1-acre property was already devoted to their Christmas tree farm. Though there was little room left for more trees, Black began her annual giveaways. She also studies soil health through citizen science projects, experimenting with ways to help plants survive. 

Black describes the giveaways as her own personal project — Brown helps where he can, hauling seedlings, supporting the logistics and cheering her on, but the day-to-day work belongs to her. At first, she simply dug up seedlings that appeared around the property and in her community. 

“It was kind of hard, strenuous and not really a reliable way to get seedlings,” she said. “A lot of them would die.”

So she started over. She bought books on propagation and learned how to collect seeds. She experimented with germination, waiting through Colorado winters to see what survived, and every season offered another lesson. Even now, after nearly two decades, she still considers herself a student.

“This all took years,” she said. “Years of practice and trial and error. There’s still a lot of stuff I’m trying to figure out.”

When asked whether she ever considered quitting after a difficult season, Black doesn’t hesitate. Gardening, she said, has a way of teaching optimism. There’s always another season and she will have another try.

A changing landscape 

While Black learned how to coax life from tiny seeds in nursery trays, Colorado’s forests were undergoing extraordinary change.

Bark beetles spread across roughly 3.4 million acres. Historic drought stressed forests across the state and record-breaking fires scoured the surface, altering entire landscapes in a matter of days. Those changes were especially visible along Colorado’s Front Range, where weather, soil conditions and management practices are greatly changed from the climate in which ponderosa pine forests evolved.

Marin Chambers, assistant director and senior research associate at the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute at Colorado State University, said decades of fire suppression dramatically altered those forests. 

Historically, low-intensity fires burned through these ecosystems every six to 30 years, clearing young trees, recycling nutrients and creating open forests with room between mature pines. Without that regular fire, forests became denser, more genetically uniform and increasingly vulnerable to severe wildfire.

“When we have these really large fires, where the majority of trees have burned or died,” Chambers said, “it’s hard for that seed to get out into the middle of those landscapes.”

Measured against millions of burned or beetle-killed trees, 12,068 seedlings can seem almost impossible to see. Black doesn’t disagree, she simply doesn’t think about the project that way.

When she hears about another wildfire or another beetle outbreak, she doesn’t wonder whether her project has been enough. She thinks about the people who will need trees next. Lately she’s been trying to improve one species in particular — ponderosa pine, and although the seeds have proven difficult to germinate, she keeps trying.

Restoring Colorado’s forests requires prescribed fire, forest thinning, watershed restoration, natural regeneration and, increasingly, carefully planned reforestation after major wildfires, Chambers said.

Those realities explain why restoring Colorado’s forests has become increasingly complex. Chris Hawkins, Colorado Urban Conservation Manager for The Nature Conservancy, believes Black’s contribution shouldn’t be measured against burned acres at all. Black’s trees were never meant to replace forests — they were meant to grow where people live. Much of Hawkins’ work focuses not on forests, but on urban landscapes, where he believes stewardship begins with everyday relationships between people and nature.

“Cities are a really important part of conservation solutions,” he said. “If we get cities right, we have a really good chance of continuing to preserve large landscapes.”

Just as a single tree offers more than shade, the value of Black’s project isn’t measured only by acres replanted. It’s measured by thousands of individual opportunities for those benefits to exist. Hawkins points to cleaner air, cooler neighborhoods, stormwater management, habitat for birds and pollinators, and measurable improvements to both physical and mental health. He said any single tree can provide aspects of that, but the more you have, the more they compound in their positive benefit.

Chambers sees efforts like Black’s as part of a much larger culture of stewardship taking shape across Colorado. Each approaches the problem from a different angle, but all contribute to the same goal.

“It’s incredibly inspiring to me,” Chambers said, “to see normal citizens … spending their time and their heart putting trees back on the landscape.”

The real work begins after planting 

Over nearly two decades, Black arrived at the conclusion many forest scientists share. A tree nurtured through its first difficult years has a chance to become something lasting.

“Any fool can go out and plant a tree,” she said. “But to actually care for and grow a tree, you need someone who is really going to commit to that. … That is way more important than planting the tree.”

Three years ago, Leisa Grant arrived at one of Black’s giveaways looking for a tree. She had seen plenty of community tree plantings through her volunteer work with the PLAY Foundation’s Tree Trust, but Black’s event stood apart. Most giveaways are organized by cities, schools or nonprofits. This one came from a single person welcoming neighbors onto her property and offering hundreds of carefully grown seedlings for free. 

“To have a community member be that involved,” Grant said, “to go through that much organization, setting that up, offering her address and all those wonderful saplings. … That was what got me excited.” 

When Grant arrived, she expected a small backyard giveaway. Instead, she found hundreds of young trees waiting for homes, and a homeowner who seemed willing to answer any question visitors had. What stood out most to her was not just the number of seedlings, but the amount of care behind them. 

Working as an arborist means Grant usually meets trees on their worst days. She often visits homeowners after branches have died, insects have spread or years of neglect catch up with a tree that might once have been saved. 

That’s one reason she volunteers as a Tree Tender. Community planting events, she said, bring crowds, photographs and celebration, but the harder work begins after everyone goes home. Instead of just going home, Grant now returns to newly planted trees, teaching neighbors how to water them properly, uncover buried root flares and recognize small problems before they become fatal.

“When you’re planting a tree, you don’t care about someone’s sexual orientation or political affiliation,” Grant said. “Your goal is to get the tree in the ground and help it survive.”

Black doesn’t know where all 12,068 of her trees ended up, and she probably never will. Her forest exists in fragments — it grows in backyards, schools, ranches, parks and neighborhoods scattered across Boulder County and beyond.

One of those trees left the giveaway strapped to Grant’s bicycle. She tucked the small chinkapin oak into her backpack and pedaled home, convinced she had found the perfect tree for her yard. Then she remembered that she rented her house.

Rather than let it sit forgotten in a garage, she turned to social media, looking for someone willing to give it a permanent home. A friend eventually took it and planted it in his backyard in Niwot. 

Now, every time Grant visits, he shows her how much it has grown. Someday, she said, when he’s in his 60s, it will shade the yard, shelter wildlife and become part of the landscape she first imagined when she carried it home. 

Finding your “thing” 

Christine Homan, a climate-aware therapist and cofounder of the Climate Emotional Resilience Institute in Boulder, said people often experience climate change as something so large they struggle to imagine what difference one person can make. While concern about climate change is a healthy response, those emotions become climate anxiety when they begin preventing people from living the lives they want to lead.

Rather than trying to solve climate change alone, Homan encourages people to find meaningful ways to stay engaged. Action, she said, is like rediscovering your agency in the face of helplessness, despair and an overwhelming problem. Everyone’s contribution looks different, but finding one that feels personally meaningful can help transform fear into sustained engagement. 

Homan said people often discover their role only after they begin participating. Agency, she said, grows through action rather than waiting to feel certain first. 

“Part of this is building the emotional resiliency to recognize this is a long-term project. This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Homan said. “How do we stay engaged, even though we might not see the benefit immediately? And that’s really what nature is asking us, is how do we keep fighting for nature for as long as she needs?”

Black’s two decades of growing trees offer another lesson Homan often sees in her work — lasting climate action isn’t sustained by individuals carrying the weight of the problem alone. It grows through communities of people, each finding their own way to contribute and recognizing they are part of something larger than themselves. 

“It’s trusting that you’re not alone and that there’s a lot of people on it and that they need you to be a part of it,” Homan said. “Everyone has their own climate action they can find.”

Chambers, from the forest restoration institute, hears that same philosophy across Colorado. She sees researchers, nonprofits, land managers and ordinary residents approaching the problem from different directions, all with the same goal.

“What gives me hope,” she said, “is working with other people who are driven toward this common goal. … I really do believe that with dedication and capacity, we actually can do a lot.”

In one corner of Black’s nursery, another generation of seedlings is already growing. Some won’t leave their containers until next summer. Others will need several more years before they’re ready for someone else’s yard.

Black isn’t thinking about milestones or records. She’s thinking about tomorrow morning and the next season. The seedlings will need watering, and a few will need transplanting. The rabbits and that darn squirrel, or “Squirrel-zilla,” as Black calls it, will probably need chasing away. There will always be another tray to fill, another seed to collect, another giveaway to prepare for.

Nearly 20 years after watching “An Inconvenient Truth,” Black is still doing the thing she knew how to do. Since then, she has settled on a simple philosophy about climate change.

“I love the Earth and this planet,” she said. “So I feel a responsibility to do my part to turn things around. That’s my little bit. Everybody needs to find something to do, and do it.”