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Replanting the Palace

By Michelle R. Tauber

King Louis XIV of France didn't settle for just any old palace. He built the grandest in the world during his reign, from 1643 to 1715. Its every detail reflected the glory of "the Sun King." Even the fountains, specially designed to make the water appear perfectly still, expressed the King's power over nature.

Yet that long-ago power couldn't save the Versailles (Vair-seye) Palace, near Paris, from nature's wrath last December 26. A storm tore across the area, toppling 10,000 trees - 80% of the trees at Versailles.

News of the destruction was upsetting for some middle schoolers in Fayetteville, Georgia. Their town and school, Fayette Middle School, are named after the Marquis de Lafayette, a young French general who helped Americans win the Revolutionary War. Some of the trees that fell at Versailles were brought there from the U.S. by Lafayette more than 200 years ago.

The students decided to help replant Versailles. They enlisted the support of Scotts/Miracle Gro, the Georgia Forestry Association and American Forests. They collected more than 6,000 saplings!

The school sent four students to France to attend the March 20 tree-planting ceremony at Versailles. Last week French ambassadors visited the school to help plant a tree there too. Scotts/Miracle Gro donated a rare George Washington tulip poplar for the occasion, grown from a tree that President Washington planted at his home, Mount Vernon. Says proud principal Mike Maxwell: "There are only four of these trees in the U.S.--one at Mount Vernon, one at the White House, one at the Vice President's house and one in front of my school!"

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