This text was taken from an email sent out Dec. 6 2024. Sign up for email alerts →
Interested in planting trees on your property? The Plantings for the Piedmont program is back and gearing up for another great year!
A partnership of The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) and Friends of the Rappahannock (FOR), Plantings for the Piedmont supports qualifying landowners in the planting of native trees and shrubs on their property. From beginning to end, we help with material, labor and financial assistance. We connect landowners to third-party cost-share programs, and PEC grant funding helps cover other project costs. This year, we are also offering three years of paid maintenance to assist as trees become established.
Qualifying properties are those that lie in the headwater counties of the Rappahannock, Potomac, James and York river watersheds: Rappahannock, Fauquier, Culpeper, Madison, Greene, Orange, Loudoun and Clarke counties.
Learn about past efforts and successes on PEC’s Plantings for the Piedmont website.
Apply for Plantings For The Piedmont
- Find your watershed using our online mapping tool
- Fill out the appropriate interest form for your geography:
All application materials must be submitted before Jan. 31, 2025 to be considered for the upcoming spring 2025 season. Applications submitted after this time will be considered for the fall 2025 or spring 2026 season.
Why Plant Trees? Benefits of Native Plantings
Planting trees has numerous benefits for both you and your environment. Whether planted upland or near water, trees help protect sources of drinking water, provide habitat for wildlife, create recreation opportunities and beautify a property.
Riparian buffers are areas of vegetation planted near a body of water. Waterways with riparian buffers are often clearer and cooler than exposed or unvegetated banks. Buffers stabilize the streambank by preventing excess nutrients, sediments and other pollutants from entering a waterway. Riparian buffers also provide high-quality habitat, particularly for fish and wildlife species that rely on forested habitat close to a source of water.
With healthy riparian buffers, we can ensure the water we drink throughout the Rappahannock, Potomac, and York river watersheds — and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay — is clean and can be a sustainable resource for future generations.
Upland tree plantings, farther from water’s edge, also benefit your waterway and property. By anchoring down loose sediment, upland trees prevent erosion and help mitigate stream flooding. Planting upland trees also helps return nutrients to the soil and provide shade and privacy over your property. PEC and our partners at the Virginia Department of Forestry can work with you to choose trees and shrubs that attract certain species of wildlife.
Program Details and Resources
Plantings for the Piedmont programs rely on grants and other sources of funding to work with local landowners to plant native trees in riparian and upland zones at no cost to the landowner.
Qualifying participants in Plantings for the Piedmont programs will receive:
- FREE technical and financial assistance, project design, labor and materials to develop a planting project on their property;
- Assistance finding and enrolling in cost-share programs, such as programs available through your local Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), or the new Riparian Forests for Landowners program through the Virginia Department of Forestry;
- Assistance with up-front costs and financing; funding support for projects that do not qualify for cost-share;
- Financial support for participants to maintain the new landscape for the first three years of its establishment;
- And more.
Applications for spring 2025 will be considered until January 2025; later applications will be considered for the fall 2025 or spring 2026 seasons.
You can learn more about this program at FOR or PEC’s websites. As Plantings for the Piedmont Program Coordinator, I am also available at [email protected] to answer questions about the native plants on your property and help you plan your tree planting project.
Find additional resources on topics including buffer design and maintenance, invasive plant species and native and riparian plants on the James River Buffer Program website.
By the Numbers
PEC has been supporting tree plantings with our partner, Friends of the Rappahannock, since 2016. Get a sense of what we have accomplished by working with landowners across the region during Planting for the Piedmont’s first five years:
If you have any questions about Plantings for the Piedmont or how you can support reforestation in your area, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our team members.
Sincerely,
Linnea Sherman
Plantings for the Piedmont Program Coordinator
[email protected]
(540) 347-2334 ext. 7076
P.S. I want to give a special shout out to the other organizations that have made this work possible! Thanks to our partners at Friends of the Rappahannock (who launched the Headwater Stream Initiative with PEC back in 2016), Soil and Water Conservation Districts (John Marshall, Loudoun, Culpeper and Lord Fairfax), the Virginia Department of Forestry and Goose Creek Association. Funding has been provided by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund, Virginia Environmental Endowment and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).