Free trees scooped up quickly across Ky. on Earth Day

It took a while for Daniel Lowry to see this kind of response to an annual Earth Day giveaway.

“In my experience, I’ve never seen a crowd that big,” Lowry said of his seven years participating in the Kentucky Utilities tree giveaway, which has been held annually on Earth Day since 1981.

The trees were gone about 20 minutes after the doors opened at 9 a.m. at both locations in Lexington and Versailles. That’s 1,500 new trees that will be planted in yards across the area.

“From a company standpoint, we have to deal with trees a lot, trimming them to make sure they don’t get into our lines, so that’s why we’ve been giving them away since 1981,” Lowry said.

This year, seedlings to the Eastern Redbud were handed out, and those are very popular, given the response we saw. During the course of a year, KU will do various tree programs through grants and the “Reforest the Bluegrass” program, but now it’s pretty clear they might need to do even more.

“It’s usually just for Earth Day that we do this (direct) handout of seedlings to folks, so maybe we’ll have to do it more often,” he said.