The Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District will unveil plans today to create a treelike monument detailing the mayor's One Million Tree program.
It's half informational kiosk, half modern art. A placard will describe Corroon's initiative. An artistic canopy will rise overhead.
The monument will serve as a centerpiece to the conservancy district's scenic Conservation Garden Park, 8215 S. 1300 West, which will double in size by fall.
The $2.5 million expansion - dubbed the "Demonstration Garden" - will teach people water-efficient landscaping techniques.
"There is a nice nexus between what we're doing with the garden and what Salt Lake County is doing with the tree program," the district's assistant general manager, Bart Forsyth, said this week. "If you plant a tree right, you can save water."
Corroon announced plans last fall to plant a million trees in the Salt Lake Valley by 2017 - an ambitious initiative that would require 274 tree plantings per day during the next decade.
The intended result: a more attractive metro area with enough shade to lower power bills and decrease water use.
City and county governments will seed 100,000 of those trees on their own. The rest are expected to sprout from the private sector - homes, businesses and churches.
"In the end, we'll have a beautiful, green canopy over Salt Lake County that we all can be proud of," Corroon told a small crowd beneath a London plane tree in the capital's Liberty Park last year.
It's difficult to say how the program is doing.
The county's million-trees Web site - which allows residents to report their contributions to the urban canopy - has registered just 211 plantings since the push began.
But that's just a fraction of the actual forest-building that has occurred, insists county open-space coordinator Lorna Vogt.
Consider the cash flowing into the program: Rocky Mountain Power donated $25,000, Smith's pitched in $10,000 and the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands offered a $10,000 matching grant.
"It is all about building the canopy," she said.
That canopy will include 200 new trees this year at the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, plus the million-tree monument that officials will introduce with artistic renderings today at an invitation-only fundraiser.
jstettler@sltrib.com
Salt Lake County wants to plant a million trees during the next decade, sprucing up the streetscape and adding enough shade to reduce residents' energy and water bills. Details on the initiative - plus a form to report new tree plantings - are available online at www.milliontrees.slco.org.
