Atlanta goes for '96 gold.

If they ever give a medal for Olympic Games preparation, this town's tree team is a shoo-in.

"The International Olympic Committee has awarded the 1996 Olympic Games to the City of . . . ATLANTA!"

With those words, International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced to the world on September 18, 1990, that Atlanta would host the July/August 1996 Games--Summer Games marking the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic movement. The excitement generated by that announcement reverberated through Atlanta. Expectant citizens who had gathered downtown cheered exuberantly. A colorful parade soon marched through a city bursting with pride. And when the Olympic flag was symbolically passed to Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson during closing ceremonies at the XXVth Olympiad in Barcelona, Spain, Atlanta's Olympic experience began in earnest.

But the euphoria soon vanished beneath the herculean challenge of preparing Atlanta for the international attention that would focus on it in 1996. Thousands of inevitable conflicts and questions arose: overlapping jurisdictional boundaries involving state and municipal committees and the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG); the need to secure project funding from the state legislature; the striking of a deal for an Olympic Stadium; and the readying of all the other sports venues.

But there was no conflict about the need for more trees--even in Atlanta, fabled as "The City in a Forest," or in a state that forestry officials say planted more trees in rural areas in the last 10 years than any other state in the nation or any other nation in the world.

Highly visible Olympic plantings were sorely needed--in downtown Atlanta and surrounding metro areas, around Olympic venues themselves, along main roads and pedestrian walkways to those venues, and along interstates in Atlanta, Savannah, and other Olympic sites. These plantings would ensure a positive impression of Georgia and America for thousands of visitors from around the globe.

For some entities--like nonprofit Trees Atlanta, the Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT), and Atlanta's Parks Department--the news intensified traditional yearly planting efforts. An umbrella group, the Georgia Tree Coalition, was formed by Georgia Forestry Commission director John Mixon to coordinate groups actively involved in Olympic tree planting.

The Coalition--a broad-based partnership of municipal, state, and federal agencies; nonprofit-tree action groups; the Georgia Urban Forest Council; ACOG; and "green industry" representatives--serves as an information-sharing vehicle. At its monthly meetings, members donate expertise and update activities.

Members sometimes unite in planting projects. MARTA (the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) combined forces with Trees Atlanta and its volunteers to plant 2,000 crepe myrtles, 3,500 pine seedlings, and 500 dogwood and oak seedlings along its formerly barren rail lines. Nick Lawrence, MARTA'S landscape architect, developed an overview map so Coalition members could plot their projects upon completion.

The Georgia Power Company got involved, too, by "adopting" its neighbor, the Atlanta Civic Center, site of the Olympic weightlifting venue. "It needed more trees," says Mike Clay of Georgia Power's Land Department, "so we got a landscape plan from the city, bought 80 crepe myrtles, dogwoods, maples, Japanese cedars, and water oaks, and planted them with more company volunteers than we had trees! Our contract crews then mulched the trees, and shaped and removed dead limbs of already existing trees." Georgia Power also prints the Georgia Tree Coalition newsletter free of charge.

"Everywhere we turned, people wanted to help," Mixon says, "including the state's Department of Corrections. They said, 'Don't forget our manpower! We've got trustees just begging for something to do.'" Carol Wulff, a probation officer, adds that judges may opt to give sentences of community service time rather than jail time so that "probationers can put something back into the community. They enjoy making special efforts for trees."

A green mosaic has been taking shape, compounded of plantings large and small. The Coalition's kickoff tree planting was held at Atlanta's Bowen Homes housing project in February 1992. The city provided 1,100 crepe myrtle, sawtooth oak, and loblolly pine seedlings and 16 more mature trees that were planted by Georgia Forestry Commission foresters, 40 probationers, and other volunteers.

"Our goal is to plant 25,000 trees between now and the Olympics," says Mixon. "Barcelona planted weeks and months before their Olympics occurred, but we're doing it now."

By October 1992, Olympic planting had gone "international." Consuls stationed in Atlanta, ACOG officials, and other dignitaries attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the first International Tree Planting. Held at Wade Walker Park in Stone Mountain, Georgia, just east of the city, the project--a cooperative effort of the DeKalb Federation of Garden Clubs and the DeKalb County government--will result in the planting of more than 200 trees native to countries participating in the Games. The site--close to Olympic archery, canoeing, cycling, and tennis events in nearby Stone Mountain Park--is expected to become the South's largest and most impressive arboretum.

Other city parks are also upgrading for the Olympics. The nonprofit Park Pride organization planted 87 trees in Grant Park as part of a restoration of an original 1912 Frederick Law Olmstead plan. "Funding came from a $14,000 Small Business Administration grant, Park Pride itself, and the Grant Park Neighborhood Association, where one member gave a $12,000 in-kind donation of research and design," says Allison Ickes, Park Pride's executive director.

With an America the Beautiful grant from the Georgia Forestry Commission, Park Pride also planted trees at Atlanta Memorial Park to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Arbor Day in Atlanta.

City Forester Jay Lowery has been doing still other plantings. "We've been reforesting high-profile parks and pocket parks, like the Mayor's Park," he says. "But we've also been working with neighborhoods and the DOT on major thoroughfares. The list goes on and on . . ."

Atlanta's parks may be serene, but its expressways are not, so the Georgia DOT is beautifying them with guidance and design from its landscape architect, Ed Laws. Spend a day riding the interstates with this modest, native Georgian, and you'll be impressed by the immensity of the effort.

DOT is planting 98,500 trees, 363,000 shrubs, and 28 acres of wildflowers beside the ramps and overpasses and in the rights-of-way along Interstates 75 and 85 through the city south to Hartsfield Airport. It is also landscaping the new section of state Route 400 that extends north from the city and connects with the Interstate system.

The $15-million landscaping projects, 90 percent paid for by federal money and the rest by state and local Highway Beautification funds, include maintenance costs through the 1996 Olympics, as well as replacement of any damaged plants or trees.

Plant selection includes a palette of eye-catching seasonal colors: spring's Japanese cherry trees and pink flowering crabapples accentuated by white dogwoods and yellow forsythia; summer's red crepe myrtle blossoms and pastel daylilies; oaks, magnolias, sycamores, birches, maples, and hickories--their leaves splashing yellow, gold, and red along autumn highways; and winter's evergreen pines and cedars.

On the steep slopes of exit and entrance ramps, low-growing, low-maintenance junipers and ornamental grasses are replacing broom straw and weeds. "These plantings will help eliminate mowing in those tight squeezes. We chose hardy plants to reduce maintenance costs," says Laws of his thoughtful planning.

All these DOT efforts haven't gone unnoticed. Says a photojournalist who drives frequently to the airport, "On each trip, it's as though Johnny Appleseed has flung a fistful of seeds. Grove after grove is suddenly springing up."

If gold medals were presented for Olympic tree planting, Trees Atlanta would surely be a recipient. The depth of thought of its planning, and their implementation, are awesome.

"Right after Atlanta got the Olympic nod, we had a long-range planning meeting with our Board," says Trees Atlanta's Executive Director Marcia Bansley. "Since we were founded in 1985, our goal has been to make Atlanta truly pedestrian-friendly ... a really attractive place to live and be. We realized the most important thing in the next five years was getting the city planted for the Olympics."

Trees Atlanta devised a way to inventory every single tree-planting space in the downtown area. It created an inventory form that analyzed all the street details: what kind of utility-line problems existed, awning problems, and different sidewalk situations, including widths.

Then it gathered a volunteer team of committed landscape architects, landscape contractors, and city planners who donated time on the street every Tuesday and Thursday for a solid year. They compiled a professional inventory, painting a green stripe on each place designated for a tree planting. "We could come back two years later and know exactly where we intended to plant a tree," says Bansley. "Much how-to was based on our prior tree-planting experience. We're probably the most technically involved tree-planting organization in Atlanta."

With the inventory completed, Trees Atlanta next computerized the information, street by street, block by block--exactly how many and what kind of trees needed to be planted, what caliper, and whether they would be planted in the sidewalk or in planters if there was no dirt under the sidewalk.

"We then figured out the $5-million cost, without overhead, to tree the important 2.3-mile Olympic Ring area," Bansley says. "It's a crucial area in the center of downtown where most Olympic venues will be--the Georgia Dome, the World Congress Center, the Civic Center, and the Olympic Stadium."

It also encompasses CNN Center, the headquarters for some 16,000 U.S. and foreign media representatives. Without some planting, the view outside their door would be of asphalt parking lots. "This is where people walk from hotels to the World Congress Center--a $2.5-billion economic hub for the city," Bansley says. "We were building not only for the Olympics but also for the long-term viability of the whole state."

With the planting plan in hand, Mayor Jackson designated Trees Atlanta as the coordinator of all volunteer planting in the Olympic Ring. ACOG soon after bestowed its "blessing."

To accomplish the sizable goals it had set for the city, Trees Atlanta sought sponsors. Its first big contribution came from Georgia Pacific, which offered to grow 1,000 maple, willow oak, and sycamore hardwoods in its south Georgia nursery. "They won't be big enough to be street trees, so we'll plant them in people's front yards in Olympic neighborhoods," says Bansley.

Other tree-project fundings came through sheer hard work--notifying congressmen, holding discussions with the Woodruff Foundation, seeking corporate donations from utility companies. "With Georgia's then-Senator Wyche Fowler's help," Bansley says, "we got a $500,000 Forest Service grant specifically for trees in the Olympic Ring, because Congress realized that the image of the entire United States was at stake here."

It was a start, but strings were attached: Funding couldn't be used for overhead or maintenance, and couldn't be spent until there was a matching grant.

"About a month later, when the Woodruff Foundation said they'd match it, we went all weak in the knees," says Bansley. "Part of this funding allowed us to hire a landscape architect with a Master's degree and 20 years' experience in the development field." (The year before, an America the Beautiful grant had enabled Trees Atlanta to hire a computer-whiz administrative assistant.)

Trees Atlanta's volunteer professional landscape architects ranked key planting places after detailing on a map all Olympic venues and the pedestrian paths between them. "We knew certain sections near the World Congress Center and Dome area were critical. We had never previously gotten a corporate sponsor interested in them, because they are not as publicly appealing or well known as Peachtree Street, for instance. But with federal and Woodruff money, we were able to do desperately needed plantings that nobody else would fund."

Besides major site plantings, Trees Atlanta landscaped parking lots. Bansley had had a long-term, positive relationship with parking-lot owners. That paid off in the summer of 1992 when the City Council passed an ordinance requiring parking lots to have a five-foot-wide landscape strip. "This was important to us because some downtown sidewalks are too narrow to plant. Many parking lots, including those near CNN, now sport shade trees, evergreen hollies, and magnolias."

With help from donors and volunteers, Trees Atlanta in 1992 planted 4,100 trees, plus evergreens and shrubs, on major roads and by important buildings. No spot was too small for attention. Last January it set a monthly record, planting 175 18-foot-tall shade trees in some of Atlanta's most barren and difficult to plant areas.

As Atlanta planned, so did seaside Savannah, five hours to the southeast. Once regarded as America's most beautiful city, it was thrilled to be chosen as the venue for the '96 Olympic yachting event. But a longstanding economic recession had caused hard times, and "Savannah was losing its allure," says Mary Helen Ray, chairman of the city's Park and Tree Commission.

The Olympics are spurring a renaissance. After a coalition of Savannah's environmental and other nonprofit groups matched funding from an America the Beautiful grant, a Phase One plan was devised. It inventoried heritage sites, public open spaces, major transportation corridors, and public art resources.

Phase Two--a Master Plan--followed, garnering widespread community support. In April, Savannah was awarded nearly $3.5 million in ISTEA funds (Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991) to be made available in the next three years. The city must provide 20 percent in matching funds and pay the design costs for improvements.

Savannah's entrance corridors will be greened, medians landscaped, bikeway projects established, and the Visitor's Center renovated and enhanced.

And with more than $2 million in additional DOT funds, gateways and interchanges will be landscaped, as will the Olympic Village Access.

On September 10, 1992, the Olympic flag had arrived in Savannah aboard the Coast Guard barque Eagle, with a ceremonial welcome from Georgia Governor Zell Miller, Atlanta's Mayor Jackson, Savannah's Mayor Susan Weiner, and ACOG President Billy Payne.

From Savannah, the flag traveled by special train across the state to seven Georgia cities--with much attendant hoopla--before reaching Atlanta. It was accompanied by past medal winners and a traveling exhibit offering one of the largest collections of Olympic memorabilia ever assembled. While emphasizing the Olympic traditions of ethics and international good will, the exhibit brought a harbinger of Atlanta's glory days to come.

Atlanta is a multi-cultured, multi-ethnic city. In the summer of 1996, it will welcome hundreds of thousands of guests of every color, from every part of the globe. But because of a magnificent natural tapestry--woven tree by tree, site by site, and inspired by Juan Samaranch's announcement three years ago--all Olympic attendees, athletes and audiences alike, will be united under a canopy of green.

And that makes everyone a winner.