The Man Who Planted Trees by Jim Robbins

Author:Jim Robbins [Robbins, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58836-999-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

THERE ARE FEW things in this world that can compare with the satisfaction of giving a gift of a seedling from a nearly five-thousand-year-old tree to one of the most renowned arboretums in the world. And when Clint Eastwood puts his hand on your shoulder and asks, “Mr. Milarch, how do you clone those trees?” you feel you are doing something right. The project was featured in a television special about DNA, and PBS came to interview the Milarchs. David and Jared chatted with Katie Couric on the Today show when they did a segment on the Milarchs’ efforts to clone George Washington’s tulip tree. They were named heroes for the planet by Biography magazine.

Still, striking a deep chord is one thing and striking pay dirt is another. It was deeply frustrating for Milarch that while the tree planting idea had brought him in touch with leading figures, it was nevertheless a titanic struggle to find long-term funding to continue the work of Champion Tree. The Tree Trust had been a godsend, but funding was going to run out and the project would be in financial straits again.

Over the years, many things broke Milarch’s way. Besides the Tree Trust funding, he received a small grant here, a little money there. But he couldn’t, as he said, “drag the big buffalo back into camp” and provide for the project and his family. I watched a number of potential funding sources come his way, show interest, and then disappear. Part of the problem, it has to be said, is Milarch himself; his blunt, working-class style is sometimes a square peg in the round hole of the white-collar world of nonprofit organizations and garden clubs. It was sometimes difficult for this farmer from Detroit—one who had been a bare-knuckle street brawler and a founder of the Blatz Gang, no less—to rein in the rough-hewn, alpha male part of him and move carefully in the cultivated world of high-end donors.

There have been times when it appeared things were going to finally work out, and then, at the last minute, they collapsed in a heap. That was the case with Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company. David and Jared went to Ventura, the company’s headquarters, to talk about a line of T-shirts with champion trees on them. Founder Yvon Chouinard toured them around the compound and they discussed the idea of offsetting Chouinard’s “paper debt” by planting trees. The company would figure out how many trees had been cut down to make the paper to operate the company and then commit to planting that many new trees. Everything was agreeable. Then the Milarchs and a few of the company officials went to lunch. Afterward David was told that the deal was off. Someone at lunch had been offended by an off-color joke he had told, and she had the authority to call off the arrangement. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember the joke, but I think it was something about big breasts,” said Milarch.

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