ACORNS OF HOPE

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 13, 2008 - UPDATED: 11:23 a.m.

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Church Point arborist Bob Thibodeaux practices tough love at his 100-acre tree farm northwest of Lafayette.

His live oaks grow without the benefit of fertilizer or water, other than rainfall.  If a tree in Thibodeaux’s stock at Bob’s Tree Preservation blows over, Thibodeaux doesn’t set it back up. He yanks it.

“They only get watered at the time I put them in the ground,” Thibodeaux said. “Now, boy, sometimes I’m praying for rain.”

Thibodeaux’s trees go through the equivalent of Marine boot camp. If a tree makes it out of his nursery, it will survive in nature.

After many old live oaks were blown down in hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Thibodeaux dedicated himself, with the help of volunteers, to planting 2,000 trees a year for the next five years across coastal Louisiana.

Not that the colorful Thibodeaux needs a public relations firm, but his project got a big PR boost when bicyclists from around the United States and Canada volunteered to ride across coastal Louisiana last year, planting trees as they went.

Visit http://www.acornsofhope.org to see a YouTube video of the ride that will have you tapping your feet.

“Who loves trees?” Thibodeaux beamed one recent afternoon, as the children of La Printaniere Montessori School in Baton Rouge settled themselves at picnic tables.

As traffic hurtled past the school on Perkins Road, just south of College Drive, Thibodeaux told the children  he harvests acorns from storm-resistant, drought-resistant live oaks.

Then, he helped the students dig holes to plant some of his super trees.

“I learned trees are good for the coastline,” said Lindsey Phillips, 9. “They stop erosion.”

“Pretty good,” Caruso Signorelli said of Thibodeaux’s visit. Caruso, 6, liked the part about preventing “tree avalanche (erosion)” on the coast.

Maggie Groh, 9, liked the part about “reaction wood,” a tree’s production of more cells in response to bending.