How Five New Redbud Trees in My Front Yard Led to a Surprising Journey

Three years ago I found a flyer in our mailbox offering free trees. Naturally, we said yes. A few weeks later, a team of enthusiastic volunteers planted five redbud trees on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street in front of our home in Atlanta.

Every two weeks, someone returned to water these trees. Later, someone came to replace the mulch. Another time or two, someone returned to our home to do some pruning. This care continued for two years.

All of this was done by a wonderful and revered organization called Trees Atlanta. The level of effort and coordination behind our five new trees was impressive. The fact that they do this for the thousands of trees they plant every year is staggering. (Since its inception, the organization has planted 133,000 trees and counting.)

One of Clearion’s customers sits on the board of directors for Trees Atlanta. I got an introduction to the Trees Atlanta team and quickly learned about the operational and data management challenges that had emerged with their success. 

Trees Atlanta in action

This type of large, complex maintenance operation is just the kind of thing we love to help solve. Trees Atlanta was looking for a software partner. Naturally, we said yes.

Today, Trees Atlanta runs much of its planting and maintenance operations in the Clearion vegetation work management software platform. I can look at our redbuds on a mapping app on my phone. I click one of the tree icons to see the details from the planting day (and to remember the Latin genus and species for the hundredth time). Then I zoom out to see the city covered in tree icons.

Trees Atlanta has been planting in the “City in the Forest” for over twenty years. Anyone flying into Atlanta sees that the name still rings true, but we’re losing century-old trees at a rapid pace, accelerated by drought, disease, and development. Trees Atlanta is making a huge difference in the city by beautifying neighborhoods and parks and preserving our canopy for the next 100 years.

Clearion is proud to support this worthy mission with our software and our time. As a company that started with the goal to help utility companies trim and remove trees, we’re excited to see the expansion of our technology into organizations that, on the surface, seem so different.

And that takes me back to the surprising part: it’s especially fascinating to see that the operational challenges of these seemingly different organizations are actually quite similar. 

Redbud tree work

 

And even more wonderfully surprising is how an organization with such a different mission (planting trees versus clearing utility rights-of-way) can complement each other to deliver better outcomes for their respective organizations, and for the communities they serve.

To chat about your project and learn more about how Clearion can help you, email Sam Appling or call (678) 469-2667.