Colorado State University and the Colorado State Forest Service have broken ground on a new facility that will help produce millions of new trees every year. The new facility, located at the CSU Foothills Campus in western Fort Collins, will replace the previous nursery which had been in operation for decades.
“In Colorado we have a lot of wildfires, and they take out a lot of trees,” said Kristin Garrison, associate director of forest planning and implementation for the Colorado State Forest Service. “We have a huge reforestation backlog throughout the U.S.”
Since 1957 CSU and the forest service have worked together to create seedlings for the public. Seedlings are small and young trees that can easily be taken and planted in other locations in order to expedite the reforestation process.
Thanks to $10.3 million from the State of Colorado and an additional $5.3 million from the U.S. Forest Service, soon the largest seedling producer in the state will be able to bolster its production.
“We are the only big production facility that is providing those seedling trees to non-federal entities,” Garrison said.
“Over time our labor costs have been huge because everything was done by hand,” Garrison said. “It was very labor intensive and that is where we use students from Colorado State University.”
The new facility will include an upgrade in technology which will automate some of the process, allowing for more seeds to be planted and more trees to be available to the consumer.
Recently the nursery was producing around 300,000 seedlings per year. The new facility could produce more than 2 million per year. Garrison said that will allow the nursery to better serve more people in Colorado.
“The big thing people use our trees for is reforestation,” Garrison said. “When we have crown fires it is burning up the seed source, so for that area to reestablish naturally is challenging.”
While some of the trees are also purchased by the public for other needs, many of them go toward people wanting to help their land bounce back from wildfire.
If everything goes to plan the new facility is expected to be completed by spring of 2026. The process of growing the trees before sale typically takes around one year, meaning the first trees from the new nursery should be available in 2027.
