At Thurgood Marshall Middle School, Green Interchange is putting the finishing touches on something pretty special -- an outdoor classroom built around a food forest and herb garden, designed specifically for the school's culinary program. A food forest is exactly what it sounds like: a diverse, self-sustaining ecosystem full of edible plants, fruits, and vegetables that mimics the way a natural forest grows. After three years of tending and waiting, the apple trees are finally beginning to bear fruit — real ingredients that students can bring straight into the kitchen. Alongside the food forest, an herb garden fills the air with basil, rosemary, and mint, giving students a hands-on introduction to the plants they'll actually cook with.
The impact goes well beyond the kitchen. This outdoor classroom functions as a living laboratory where science, agriculture, and nutrition stop being abstract subjects and start being something students can touch, smell, and taste. Green Interchange sees this as a model worth replicating — a proof of concept for what environmental education can look like in schools across Tennessee when you give young people real soil to work with and real food to grow. Healthy eating habits, environmental stewardship, and genuine curiosity about the natural world: this is what it looks like when all three show up in the same place at the same time.
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This spring, Tennesseans showed up for their trees. Green Interchange's Plant a Tree for Tennessee 2026 campaign moved 4,890 native trees across the state, our strongest campaign performance yet. Seven species, one mission: getting the right trees into the right hands, rooted in Tennessee soil. Eastern Redbuds, Wild Plum, Roughleaf Dogwood, Buttonbush, Sycamore, Ninebark, and American Beautyberry are now quietly doing what native trees do best—feeding pollinators, sheltering songbirds, stabilizing watersheds, and storing carbon for decades to come. The numbers tell one story. The trees tell another. What started as a seedling sales campaign became something more indelible — proof that when you make it easy for people to act, they will. Every $2.99 tree represents a neighbor who chose to plant something that will outlive them. That's not a transaction. That's a legacy.
Del Rio Update: French Broad River Restoration
When Hurricane Helene tore through East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, it didn't just damage homes and businesses — it stripped thousands of trees from riverbanks across the region, leaving the French Broad River exposed, unstable, and deeply scarred. The Tennessee Division of Forestry identified roughly $60 million in forest damage to the East Tennessee area alone. Green Interchange, alongside the Tennessee Environmental Council and other partner organizations, answered that need with "Re-Root the River" — a community planting event focused on Del Rio, Tennessee, where volunteers came from across the state to put native trees and live stakes back into the ground along the battered riverbanks. The event put the Tennessee Environmental Council's cumulative tree-planting total at 1,060,500 trees — with about 500 planted along the French Broad that day alone. But the impact goes beyond the numbers. As Dr. John McFadden, Green Interchange's CEO, put it: "tree roots are to the creek bank like rebar is to concrete" — holding the structure together while also filtering pollutants from stream water, rainwater, and floodwaters. These trees are small now. In a few years, they'll be doing the quiet, indelible work of holding a river together.
Dry Fork Creek Update
Earlier this year, Green Interchange got to work on Dry Fork Creek in Hermitage, Tennessee — a waterway the state had already flagged for carrying too much sediment. The project came together through a Clean Water Act settlement: rather than install a treatment system the state couldn't approve, defendants put $30,000 toward actually fixing the problem at the source. Led by Dr. John McFadden, our team stabilized 135 linear feet of crumbling streambank that was eating away at tree roots and creeping dangerously close to the homes sitting right above it. Think of it like rebuilding a foundation — but for a creek. We regraded the slope, anchored the bank with cedar logs and erosion control matting, and swapped out a rotting railroad tie wall for a brand new cedar timber retaining wall. And the best part? We're not done!
This fall and winter, native trees and live stakes go into the ground along the restored bank. No concrete, no chemicals — just roots doing what roots have always done. Holding things together, filtering the water, and slowly bringing a little of the good stuff back.
Lytle Creek Tree Planting Recap
On December 4, 2025, Green Interchange and community volunteers came together to plant 65 native trees along Lytle Creek in Murfreesboro. This restoration effort will help stabilize streambanks, improve water quality, and strengthen habitat along this important tributary of the Stones River.
Lytle Creek plays a key role in the Cumberland River watershed, and planting native trees helps reduce runoff, filter pollutants, and build long-term resilience for both the creek and the surrounding community. We’re grateful to the Arbor Day Foundation for sponsoring this project and to every volunteer who helped make a healthier watershed possible—one tree at a time.
