Red Spruce Planting at Cranesville Swamp

Close-up of a red spruce seedling with volunteers in the background. — Planting Red Spruce Over the past 22 years, volunteers have planted more than 62,000 red spruce trees in the forests of western Maryland. © Severn Smith / TNC

Volunteer Overview

Join the Maryland/DC chapter of The Nature Conservancy for an annual tradition—planting red spruce at Cranesville Swamp Preserve. The address for our planting site is 4081 Cranesville Rd, Oakland, MD 21550. It is at the intersection of Muddy Creek and Cranesville Rd.

This is a two day event taking place on:

Friday, April 18 from 11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Saturday, April 19 from 10:00 am - 3:00 pm

Volunteers may sign up for one or both days.

Red spruce (Picea rubens) once covered thousands of acres in western Maryland. Logging and subsequent wildfires at the turn of the 20th century drastically reduced its range. It's estimated that in the Central Appalachians as much as 90% of the original red spruce forest is now gone.

You can help us change that statistic and make a difference—one seedling at a time!

Your efforts will improve habitat quality for rare plants and animals, restore carbon-rich soils and improve hydrology and local climate, reducing erosion and increasing percolation of water into the underlying bedrock. It's a pretty good payoff for a spring day spent in a beautiful place!

Learn more about Cranesville Swamp here.

In person work