Groundwork opening nursery

By Rebecca Keister
PBN Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE – Groundwork Providence, a nonprofit dedicated to building a cleaner, greener capitol city will open its Hope Tree Nursery on Sprague Street today.

The opening marks a year of work in partnership with the R.I. Department of Environmental Management to construct the urban nursery in the city’s West Elmwood section.

The 4,500-square=foot nursery was constructed on a brownfield – a piece of land containing industrial use contaminants – owned by the R.I. Department of Housing and is designed to produce low-cost native trees for the city’s least forested neighborhoods which could limit buying and transporting trees grown in nurseries in other states.

The trees will be sold to residents at a price anticipated to be less than half the cost of commercial nurseries.

Groundwork Providence is working in conjunction with the city of Providence to plant 40,000 new trees here.