LAGUNA HILLS : Brownies’ Trees Are Looking for a Home

Planting a tree in an Orange County park is usually pretty simple, especially if you want to do it on Arbor Day. But not always.

Waunita Rosenbaum of Laguna Hills thought the easiest way to teach Orange County Brownie Troop 1288 about the environment would be to have its members grow trees from seedlings and plant them in a park at the end of the year.

But instead of simply learning about carbon, oxygen and potting soil, the group from San Joaquin Elementary School learned that planting a tree in Orange County can get complicated.

Nearly three months after being promised a spot in Mason Park in Irvine, the clump of white alders still has nowhere to lay down roots. Rosenbaum said her girls are crushed.

“I’ve got 14 6-year-old and 7-year-old girls crying their eyes out,” Rosenbaum said.

The problem is simply one of miscommunication, park officials say.

“I know of no time that we refused to allow somebody to plant a tree,” said Tim Miller, manager of regional park operations. “That’s why this is sort of unusual. . . . It’s hard for me to imagine what went wrong here.”

Rosenbaum said the area in which her trees were to be planted wasn’t ready on Arbor Day as promised and that an alternative plan to plant a tree near a picnic shelter in June fell through when the shelter was promised to someone else for a company picnic.

Park officials say that Rosenbaum neglected to fill out the proper forms and that the shelter was given away by a park employee who was unaware of her request.

Rosenbaum said she is worried that with the end of the school year approaching, and the troop about to disband, the trees will go unplanted.

“Doesn’t anyone want these trees?” she asked in exasperation.

Miller, who praised the Brownies for their project, says the county will be happy to take the trees.

“If we made a mistake, if we screwed up, then we’ll have to make arrangements,” Miller said, adding that the park system’s record clearly shows that trees are planted all the time.

But Brownies like Katie Oliver, 7, are waiting.

“If we keep these trees and we don’t have any place to put them, they might not live,” she said. “Trees are very important. We wouldn’t want to kill trees.”