Environment

Charlotte Forest Garden

Charlotte Forest Garden is a two-acre biodiverse garden with fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, edible perennials, herbs, native wildflowers, and more.  The committee organizes plantings and maintenance of the forest garden, recruits volunteers, provides educational outreach, seeks monetary and in-kind donations, applies for grants, and oversees all aspects of the project.  Previous environment projects included the collection of plastic bottle caps to be recycled into two benches that have since been installed in the forest garden.   The committee meets regularly on the first Wednesday of the month from 5-7 p.m. in the basement of the First Congregational Church.  Contact Chair, Val Reisen, at valreisen@gmail.com or 517-230-1969 for more information.

Click to Donate to Charlotte Forest Garden 

Kind News

Kind News™ magazine is an eight-page publication published by RedRover ®, a national animal welfare nonprofit organization, that helps children understand and respect animals and think about why treating animals and people with kindness matters. The magazine encourages both empathy and critical thinking in children by celebrating the human-animal bond and helps motivate children to take action to improve the lives of animals. The Club donates subscriptions for two classrooms and about 35 members donate to sponsor additional classrooms. 

Resource Conservation

We recycle can tops, printer cartridges,  etc.  The chair who oversees the collection of these items has a basket ready at the meetings for members to recycle their items. The club has had a speaker from Charlotte Area Recycling speak at one of out regular meetings.

Beautification

Organized by a chair, volunteers “pitch in” to clean out and plant the  downtown urns.  In the spring, our members clean the urns and plant flowers that bloom all summer helping to beautify out downtown business district.  We also clean and plant several beds downtown, Veteran’s Park, Dean Park.  In the past our volunteers have decorated for the winter by putting greens in the urns. More recently we have organized a community involvement project where community volunteers are assigned urns to decorate with snowmen.  Hot chocolate and donuts are served after the decorating of the urns, and this is becoming a traditional winter event.  These sessions are usually held on a Thursday or Saturday morning and take about 2 hours.