To see photos and information about the 25 we’ve planted in so far, visit the “50 States” tab at the top of this website.

This video was produced by our intern, Rachel Tekula, who has been a really quick learner in the editing room, as well. We decided to expand on the concept of our original “Tour Launch” promo video.

We shot it in our backyard on Maui, which is filled with young, rare native Hawaiian plants and trees. Enjoy, and please share comments!

As we rolled into each town with notebook pages full of connections to local tree nurseries, planting organizations, land owners and volunteers, I think we even surprised ourselves a little.

It wasn’t an easy process, that’s for sure. We kind of made it up as we went along. That said, something of this scope has to start somewhere, so we started by “calendaring” our “ideal” itinerary and going from there.

Slowly but surely, locations to plant, key interview appointments, and tree pickups or deliveries went down on paper. Even though certain things would fall through and require us to change course a little or switch a few dates around, the process was relatively painless.

So, now that we are about 5 months away from hitting the road again to plant native trees in the 25 remaining states (note: the 25 BIGGER states), we are back to the drawing board again. We’ve got the whiteboard out, the atlas open, and we’re happy to report that the first draft of our planting tour is on the calendar!

Between March and May 2011, our planting tour will stop in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota, Washington, and Alaska. (Phew! Long list!) In addition, we hope to swing into Washington D.C. to participate in the Environmental Film Festival happening there in mid-March.

Ideas have been sprouting as to places/trees we’d like to visit along the way, and we’re open to suggestions as we finish our goal of planting native trees in all 50 states. Feel free to leave comments with your ideas! And of course, when the tour is complete, we will celebrate with a huge tree planting event and festival on our home island of Maui (date TBD – sometime in May 2011).

To support our efforts, click here to visit our online store – proceeds from sales go to support our project! Check out our new Commemorative Tree Planting offers!

Several people we met along the way had dropped his name as if his recent book “Bringing Nature Home” (Timber Press, 2007) would revolutionize the landscaping industry, which is currently worth about $50 billion dollar annually.

Why? Because Tallamy shares the data he’s collected over the course of 20 or so years studying insects’ dependency on native plants.

His precautionary tale (based on hard data) is pretty important: if we don’t plant native plants and trees in our backyards, we are taking a part in the dismantling of the food web we depend on for survival.

One of the most quoted parts of his book is where he states that one oak tree in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. can feed/house about 600 different species of Lepidopterae. That’s just moths and butterflies! (There are many more juicy tidbits in the book. Click on the book cover image above to purchase, and a percentage will go to help the Plant a Wish project!)

Once we heard the buzz, we knew we needed to meet him, plant a tree with him in Delaware, and interview him extensively for our film. And we hit a home run!

Here’s an excerpt from our forthcoming documentary. We plan to post about one per week, featuring various experts and tree caretakers we’ve met along the way so far.

Please enjoy!

Doug Tallamy is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, where he has written more than 65 research articles and has taught insect taxonomy, behavioral ecology, and other subjects. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities.