A giving spirit takes root: Kids commit to bringing back trees destroyed by October tornado

A few days after a powerful tornado ravaged her neighborhood, 7-year-old Brinley Smith walked past the hackberry branches stretched across her driveway and down her street in Preston Hollow.

“I saw a lot of damage, and trees fell down, and houses were broken, so I said, ‘I want to do something about trees,’” she recalls.

Indeed, the October storm wiped out about 3,500 trees and 201 acres of tree canopy, according to a survey by the Texas Trees Foundation.

Brinley told her dad, Brian P. Smith, that she wanted to plant trees, which instantly struck a chord.

Smith is an entrepreneur who is focused on mitigating climate change through clean energy. Early in his career, he worked for the American Forest Foundation and the Global Environmental Technology Fund.

“We have a strong environmental ethic in our family, so we are very happy that Brinley has absorbed that ethic and taken the reins,” Smith says.

He advised her to start a nonprofit in order to make a bigger impact. They reached out to friends at Brinley’s school, Parish Episcopal School, to establish a charity called Kids Luv Trees with a parent board and a website, kidsluvtrees.org.

They joined up with the Texas Trees Foundation and Retreet, two Dallas nonprofits that are also dedicated to planting trees, for expertise and aid.

Today, Kids Luv Trees is on a mission to plant 500 trees on residential properties that were torn up by the powerful storm.

Brinley and her 5-year-old brother, Preston, have gone door-to-door to collect donations and recruit volunteers. They hosted a lemonade and cocoa stand in February that generated $3,000, and they want to have an outdoor dance party as a fundraiser when gathering restrictions are lifted.

The first joint dig of Kids Luv Trees with the Texas Trees Foundation and Retreet will be on Oct. 17 or 24, around the anniversary of the tornado.

Volunteers will install saplings on private property along the tornado’s path. Most of the trees will stand 6 to 8 feet high, explains Matt Grubisich, director of operations for the Texas Trees Foundation.

Retreet restores trees in areas that have been decimated by natural disasters, from Bastrop, Texas, to Ontario, Canada.

“It’s a strange thing to have this exact situation befall our hometown,” says Retreet founder and president Grady McGahan. “Anybody who is in the path of the tornado who requests trees, we will facilitate that.”

Brinley is certainly getting an education from her experience with Kids Luv Trees.

“I learned a lot of reasons that trees are important, like they create oxygen,” she says. “I learned that nonprofits are very hard to do.”

“It is hard work,” echoes her father, “but the great thing is that people so far are really willing to help. You can sense that it touches their emotions ... that bringing the community together to do something practical helps us all heal through a positive experience.”

How to help

To donate or volunteer, visit kidsluvtrees.org, texastrees.org or retreet.org.