Acorns of Hope: Louisiana’s Own Johnny Appleseed

Once upon a time, the Louisiana Gulf Coast was lined with cheniers, groves of oak trees that grew out of and helped to contain the silty marshlands that constitute our shoreline. Today, however, Louisiana is losing her Chenier Plain at an alarming rate of 24 square miles per year (or one football field every 38 minutes!)—and that’s during a good year. In 2005 alone, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita transformed an estimated 217 square miles of Louisiana coastal marshland into open water. Our bayous are disappearing at one of the highest rates of erosion in the world.

That’s what Cajun arborist and Acorns of Hope founder Bob Thibodeaux and his granddaughter, Alexandra Futch, are determined to change. Acorns of Hope is a project dedicated to preserving Louisiana’s dwindling coastline one tree at a time. It began with a bike, a shovel, and a revelation: after witnessing the destruction of valuable land and live oaks at the hands of FEMA relief contractors, Thibodeaux refused a state contract that would have meant the destruction of a grove of 150-year-old trees.

“There comes a point in your life when you start to really understand what is truly important,” affirms Thibodeaux. His decision persuaded then-governor Mike Foster to suspend the project, but seven years later, Hurricane Rita nearly decimated the grove. “It was then that I decided to do something about it.” And so he did, by riding his bike 25 to 35 miles a day, planting thousands of trees along the way. Soon, Thibodeaux’s employees and members of the national bicycling organization Tour Des Trees got involved, and Acorns of Hope was formed.

The goal is to plant 2,000 live oaks in the Chenier Plain—and at least 10,000 more trees across coastal and southern Louisiana—over a five-year period that kicked off with the first Acorns of Hope tour in 2007. In November, the 2008 tour began in Lake Charles and concluded in Houma four days and 250 miles later, planting around 1,400 trees at each stop along the way.

“Though our efforts may seem small, we like to say that with a small seed of hope grows a mighty oak, which can live a very long and indefinite life,” says Acorns of Hope ambassador and director Alexandra Futch. “No other place on earth grows such a majestic specimen as we do here in Louisiana, and not caring for and making progressive changes to preserve our land will extinguish the blessings God has given us here in our great state.” ✦