GreenCare for Troops: Mowing Down a Burden on Service Personnel

Mowing Down a Burden on Service Personnel

Sometimes an offer sounds too good to be true—like this one, for example: “Free lawn and landscape care for families of armed forces personnel who have a major breadwinner serving in the Middle East.”

Sounds good—but there has to be a catch—right?

“There’s no catch,” says Den Gardner, whose organization —Project EverGreen—is in its second year of sponsoring a national public service effort called GreenCare for Troops. “We currently have 4,035 families of service personnel signed up for the program. It doesn’t cost them a penny and we hope to enlist even more families to sign up.”

Gardner, who is executive director of Project EverGreen, says the roots of this generous offer go back to the basic mission of Project EverGreen. “Quite simply,” he says, “we are working to dramatize the benefits of green spaces to our environment, our economy and our lifestyles. At the same time we realized that, for many service families, lawn and landscape care can become a burden when there are concerns for the safety of a loved one overseas.”

This led to Project EverGreen’s formation of GreenCare for Troops and a call for help to lawn and landscape contractors and volunteers nationwide.  “Last year we enlisted 670 firms to donate their services on a volunteer basis,” Gardner said, “and this year we’ve already got over 1,000 volunteers.”

Recently, 12-year-old Tanner Neilsen of Orem, UT signed up to be a volunteer. He was looking on the Internet for a service project to gain service hours for Boy Scouts and found the GreenCare for Troops program.

“Many service projects I found online required power tool use so you have to be over 18,” Neilsen said. “A lot of kids my age have to mow their own lawn, so really anyone can help out with this project.”

Neilsen said he is now trying to recruit other Boy Scouts to join in the mission and help out these military families. Neilsen himself is signed up to help two families.

There is a very strong need for volunteers for this program. Over 110 families have signed up across the state and only a few families have been able to be paired up with a volunteer.  

According to Gardner, the appreciation of this effort by service personnel and their families has been most gratifying. “We even had one soldier serving in Iraq ask us to send him a Project EverGreen banner to display—and we were happy to oblige.”