It is time for our generation to save the world.

At least that’s what Grant Gardner of Planting America thinks.

‘We started off thinking of a way to get our generation to step up and turn around what’s going on in the environment,’ said Gardner, a sophomore marketing major at Virginia Tech. ‘We wanted to find something that pretty much anyone can do. We threw around a lot of ideas, and we realized that if everyone just planted a few trees, it would have a big impact.’

According to Gardner, this generation of college-aged students is often underestimated, and he hopes that they can work together to improve the environment and protect the world.

Gardner and Matt Cortina, a sophomore English major at Rutgers, will be spending their next summer vacation riding their bikes across America, a 4,247-mile journey, while planting more than a million trees.

Alex Conway, a sophomore film major at Syracuse, will be right behind them, filming the whole thing.

The three students have been friends since they were classmates together at Hunterdon Central High School in Flemington, N.J.

‘As soon as we decided to do a documentary, we wanted Alex to do it,’ Gardner said.

During Winter Break, Conway told Cortina he was interested in working on a documentary, and Conway became the group’s third member.

‘When you hear about the environment in the news, they only focus on the negative,’ Conway said. ‘Nobody is saying ‘What are we going to do about it?”

Conway will follow the pair in a van with his equipment, recording as much of the action as he can. After three months of editing his senior year, he plans to enter the completed documentary in film festivals and use it for his visual and performing arts senior thesis.

Local communities will meet Planting America at each of its main stops, through various local service organizations, and together they will plant seeds toward the eventual goal of one million trees.

‘In South Africa, they cut down half a million trees a day,’ Conway said. ‘Now two people will be planting one million trees in a summer.’

In March, Gardner and Cortina registered Planting America as a non-profit organization. The pair hopes their new listing, Plating America Inc., will help encourage donations. Interested parties can either donate money or can plant a tree of their own.

To encourage people taking the initiative to improve their own local environments, Planting America is offering to reimburse people who plant seeds. Photos of their trees will be posted on the Web site.

People can also participate by providing lodging or food for the group as they make their stops or by offering suggestions on their Web site.

They will begin their journey in Yorktown, Va., on May 15, 2008, and will end in Florence, Ore., on August 6. Gardner and Cortina will be on bicycles, a longtime passion of theirs, and Conway will be close behind, in a van with the rest of his equipment.

Conway is glad for an opportunity to make a documentary.

‘It’s about catching the cinematic value of real life, and I’m hoping for some real drama,’ he said. ‘Anything said on the trip is subject to go in.’

He also started posting short video segments on the ‘vlog’ at plantingamerica.org. There, visitors can view clips of their promotional events leading up to the trip, some outtakes or interesting videos during the trip, and some of the finished clips as he begins to edit them.

Conway said there will be three versions of the film made, including a feature length, a shorter version for TV or the Internet, and a 20-30 minute music video, of more scenic shots.

Conway also said he will be in the documentary, as the viewer’s guide through the events. He plans to focus only on the documentary and doesn’t plan to participate in the planting and riding, but if Gardner and Cortina need his help to reach their goal, he will step in.

‘I’m working on developing a thesis for the documentary,’ Conway said. ‘I’m hoping to make it about generations. Our generation is unfortunately one of narcissism, but this is the time we must think about others. We must prepare for the future.’

Film has been a passion of Conway’s since he was young.

In high school, Conway made a film called ‘Pluto’s Cave,’ which received a high portfolio rating when he applied to Syracuse. Recently he has been working in black and white 16mm film and is currently working on a film called ‘Waking Up.’

‘When I was in second grade, we had to write what we wanted to do when we grow up, and I said that I wanted to make movies,’ he said. ‘I know it’s corny, but I was even thinking about it in second grade.’

For More Info:

Plantingamerica.org

Or

The Planting America Facebook group

Published on March 31, 2007 at 12:00 pm