Is your ex a thorn in your side? Here's how $5 can help both heartbreak and the environment, thanks to a Valentine's Day fundraiser in Waukesha Co.

WAUKESHA COUNTY, Wis. (CBS 58) -- With Valentine's Day coming up this weekend, for many, love is in the air.

But sometimes, the holiday is about letting go.

Now one fundraiser in Waukesha County is helping with both heartbreak and the local ecosystem, letting you turn your ex-tra emotions into environmental action. 

"It has been phenomenal, I've heard so many funny stories," said Helen Holtz, the land management director for the Waukesha County Land Conservancy. 

Earlier this week, she came up with the "Is Your Ex a Thorn in Your Side" fundraiser, where you pay just $5 dollars to write your ex's name (or coworker, boss, former friend, etc.) on a buckthorn tree which will then be cut down and treated properly to make sure it never comes back.

"I've heard the word cathartic, I've heard this is an amazing fundraiser, a lot of people think it's just a fun way to get involved," Holtz told CBS 58's Ellie Nakamoto-White. "You are cutting the tree down to a stump and then we are using a sponge applicator to apply herbicide on top to make sure it kills it on the spot... and then treating it so it never comes back so it cannot be a thorn in your side any longer."

According to Mackenzie Manicki, a terrestrial invasive plant specialist with the Wisconsin Deptartment of Natural Resources, buckthorn is extremely problematic. 

"They can be in forests, they can be along stream corridors, along roadways, pastures, grass, all kinds of sites," Manicki said. “They tend to form these really dense stands of just buckthorn so you can imagine a wall of these woody trees and shrubs with a whole bunch of leaves creates a ton of shade underneath them, and that really can prevent things like forest regeneration or otherwise native plants germinating or just generally growing.”

The "cut stump" method, which is what Holtz and the conservancy are using, is especially effective as the chemical herbicide gets down deep.

"It acts like a bully in the woods so it hogs up nutrients, it shades out sunlight for our native species and so the native species cannot thrive," said Janet Barthel, a supervisor for the Retzer Nature Center. "When you cut a stump in the winter and you're applying that chemical, it's just going straight down to the roots."

So far, they've raised more than $300 dollars.

"That's one of my favorite things about my job is getting our community involved in helping and protecting these really awesome ecosystems that we have here in Waukesha County," Holtz said. "Our mission is to protect and care for environmentally significant land and water here in Waukesha County for future generations and so as a nonprofit, these fundraisers are so beneficial."

If you want to get involved, click here.