MOORPARK : Park District Seeks Volunteers to Plant, Water 3,000 Donated Oak Saplings

A Moorpark nursery and the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District are seeking volunteers to help plant 3,000 trees for a project that could reduce smog, cool temperatures and prevent erosion in eastern Ventura County.

Mitsuwa Nursery, on Fair Oaks Avenue north of Moorpark, has volunteered to donate the trees if enough volunteers step forward to plant them in open areas owned by the park district in Simi Valley and Oak Park.

The nursery has 1,000 oak saplings ready to be planted in Oak Park later this fall, and has started growing 500 more for planting there next year.

So far, a church group and a few individuals in Oak Park have volunteered to help plant the trees, which will go mainly in Oak Canyon Community Park.

The nursery’s owners and employees want to extend the reforestation project to Simi Valley, gathering acorns later this fall to seed another 1,500 trees.

But nursery owners and park district officials first want to enlist volunteers.

“We’re trying to determine now if there’s enough interest in Simi Valley to do this,” said Sharon Hamilton, the district’s volunteer coordinator.

For planting, volunteers will have to spend about 15 minutes per tree, she said. They’ll also be responsible for watering the trees once each month for about six months.

The idea for the tree-planting project germinated in the mind of one of Mitsuwa Nursery’s owners, Steve Beimel. The nursery’s usual business is growing bedding plants and ground covers. But Beimel, 44, began envisioning an oak forest covering the now mostly barren hills around Oak Park, where he lives.

“It would truly transform the community,” he said.

In both Simi Valley and Oak Park, planting trees in open space areas would provide shade, helping to reduce temperatures, Beimel said. The trees’ leaves would also help clean the air by absorbing carbon dioxide, a component of smog, and their roots would help prevent erosion.