 What a beautiful location we have. Really excited as when we first started the treasure tree program this year I just had this vision of doing it under a treasure tree and what a magnificent location that we have. So I'm really excited, really excited about the treasure tree program and being able to award some folks that we have here but before I get going I did want to introduce our host which is Columbia College and President Dr. Carol Moore as she will welcome us today in this location so. Certainly is appropriate that the tree today has kept us dry so welcome everyone. This is a pleasure to have you on our campus and we are very proud and comforted by this tree most days that we are on campus. So I'm glad that you could be here today for this ceremony and also to enjoy the absolute amazing wonder of this beautiful tree so with that. Thank you, thank you. So with that I want to talk a little bit about some of the other organizations that we have in the community that really helped to embody and take care of our tree canopy in the urban forest and with that we have a couple different organizations. Columbia Garden Club is a huge supporter of what the Forestry and Beautification Division does. There's also the Tree and Appearance Commission and I want to just be able to let these folks speak a little bit about what they do and kind of the initiatives that they oversee and just so we can find more information about them just so you know a little bit about some of these other organizations so with that I have Carolyn Dugan from the Tree and Appearance Commission. If she'd like to come out and just say just a few words that'd be great. Hi everyone. I'm from the City's Tree and Appearance Commission. We are 13 volunteer members from the city. We meet once a month and we are mainly a peanut gallery I would like to say for the City Council and any new policies regarding trees in the urban forest. We give our recommendations. We help give the planners our advice on the upcoming master plan. Anything about trees and beautification. We're trying to build up our social media so you all can come to events that we're having so you can check out the City's website for that. I do have two projects that we're working on that I think you all might be interested in. In January and February we have a plant the park and that's where every year we go around and try to increase the smaller understory trees throughout the City's parks and the second one that we have been working on for several years is we're trying to paint and give the train bridge over Gervaestri a beautiful facelift that's such an important entrance into the City. I don't know if you all have seen the other one on five points that look so nice now so we're still raising funds and trying to make that a beautiful part of Columbia as well so thank you. Also another group that I'm very fond of is the Columbia Green and they do a lot to sponsor a lot of our annuals and some of our beds and we also they really encourage the planting of trees and we just completed a 10,000 tree planting ceremony and so they're a big advocate of tree planting in the community and so I wanted Susie Thorpe president of Columbia Green to say a few words about their organization. Well thanks Caleb for inviting Columbia Green to participate in this really special day. It's also nice to see a number of Columbia Green board members here and a lot of those members are also members of the C-TAC board so it's a good synergy that way. So Columbia Green has a really long history of supporting tree initiatives and as Caleb said last month in partnership with Forestry and Beautification we wrapped up a several-year project to plant 10,000 trees city-wide and what was even better is the mayor came and helped us plant that 10th ceremonial 10,000th tree at Riverfront Park and we hope early next year to be announcing another exciting tree initiative but meanwhile for those of you who don't know Columbia Green we are a nonprofit founded in 1984 and dedicated to beautification of the greater Columbia area as a way to enhance the quality of life for all of us who live and work in the city. You see what we do every day when you drive into the city through the city gateways like the Sunset Drive area or coming off Elmwood and in medians throughout the city. We work with Forestry and Beautification to help with the plantings for those areas. We also give grants to support a variety of landscaping projects in neighborhoods for nonprofit institutions and other public institutions. So we do all these things we do by raising money and the way we raise money is through memberships and our annual festival of gardens which this year will be held May 1st and 2nd in 2020 it's coming year. So you can learn more about what we do on our website at ColumbiaGreen.org. Hope you'll read it decide to join us and I want to say it's a pleasure to be under this fabulous tree. And with that too I would uh I cannot go on without thanking my staff. So my staff is over here. I have at the end Anne Heiler who's our Reforestation program coordinator and the 500 trees that she plants in the right of way every year. I have assistant Glenn Brown who is a certified arborist and is a certified arborist as well. If you guys are calling the main forestry line you are going to be talking to lovely Miss Wendy Bell and that's who you will hear and she disperses the information and gets us the things we need to be able to take care of our trees. Then also we have her here Amy Wright our landscape designer who is also a certified arborist who does all of our landscaping as well as some tree stuff whenever we need her to do that. So I appreciate those guys and they really uh they care about our urban forests and they really take care of things and I really appreciate their time so um you know round of applause for them as well. So with that the treasure tree program started back in 2006. Some of you may know Susie Hayward as she was with the Columbia Garden Club and still is and she wasn't able to be with us today but she wanted to pass along her thanks for carrying on the program and it's been along for quite some time and it's just really cool to be able to celebrate trees such as this and with that just think back to maybe the first time you came across a tree that really stopped you in your tracks whether it be the size of it the species of tree maybe there are some features about it that really it just made you think a tree like this you think man imagine the storms the hurricanes the wind the flooding the weather that this kind of a tree like this is seen and a lot of these trees have a story to tell and so we want to celebrate that and as you can see in our program we have a lot of individuals who have some trees that are very special to them that we want to celebrate and it could be for the size also for just the nostalgia or the childhood memories that go along with some of these trees as they mark us. Hey there Mayor Steve Benjamin here thanks for watching this video make sure you give it a like right below the video and don't forget to subscribe also while you're here be sure to check out one of our other videos or follow on our social media platforms thanks again and remember we are Colombia