Adopt a Park or Public Space
Help restore native trees and habitats where volunteers alone can’t keep up. Your group can sponsor professional invasive plant control and pair it with volunteer care for lasting results.
Why This Matters?
If we are to save the trees in our natural spaces, the whole community must take direct responsibility. Public agencies (town, county, state, federal) only have budget to manage a small fraction of land. Volunteerism helps—but significant funding is needed for professional invasive control services where work is complex or large-scale.
Bottom line: Volunteer power + targeted funding = real, sustained impact.
Two Ways To Help
Rights of Way (VDOT)
The Virginia Department of Transportation currently has a budget of zero to spend on invasive plant control, but they do have a process for issuing permits to people who do the work. You can volunteer to do simple cutting, but current law does not allow volunteers to use herbicides on state-owned land.
Can you or your neighborhood adopt the right of way and pay your landscaping company (or another contract) to do that work?
If you have permission from an adjacent landowner, no VDOT permit is required.
Parks
The parks welcome trained and authorized volunteers to help cut or pull up invasive plants. In the case of Fairfax County Park Authority and the National Park Service, you can sign up for events led by others or be trained on how to work independently. (It is illegal to disturb the vegetation without permission.)
HOWEVER: Some of the more difficult work requires professional control methods. The parks have funding to control invasives on less than 10% of their properties and would welcome your help. Can you, your neighborhood, or your corporation adopt a park (or part of a park) to pay for needed professional services for at least three years of treatment? Expect a cost of approximately $2500-$3000 per acre of infestation in Year One, then half that each of the following 2-4 years. After that, volunteers should be able to manage most small recurrences, or you could continue to fund professional work.
The same procedure that applies to corporations also applies to other individuals or groups.