Severe storms felled tens of thousands of trees across the Nashville region last year, but some progress is being made toward restoring the canopy.

The city’s Root Nashville campaign — led by the Cumberland River Compact — says it set a record with 8,000 trees planted during the growing season that ended recently.

Executive Director Mekayle Houghton says the next step is helping them thrive.

“We have about 1,800 trees that we’re watering this summer. If folks look around and they see newly planted trees in their neighborhood — and it’s a dry, hot summer — we would love for extra help watering trees.”

https://twitter.com/root_nashville/status/1387866559213879298

In the last three years, the Root Nashville coalition has put 17,000 trees in the ground. (You can see the locations on this interactive map.)

They’re pushing toward a goal of planting 500,000 by the year 2050. That means they’ll need to more than double their recent planting rate. Houghton says organizers have expected to ramp up plantings as multiple tree-planting organizations scale up.