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Summer is just around the corner, and in Sacramento, that means an inevitable endless quest for shade begins. For the Sacramento Tree Foundation, it’s more of a mission than a quest.
Since 1990, the group, in partnership with SMUD, has offered up to 10 free shade trees to all SMUD customers. The program doles out more than 13,000 trees in 5-gallon buckets to residents every year, according to Stephanie Robinson, interim director of programs at the Tree Foundation.
“Once summertime hits and that heat just sets in and you feel it radiating off the asphalt and everything, people really reach out a lot more to get shade trees,” Robinson said, standing in a row of tree saplings in the foundation’s nursery. “You can feel the difference. Even now in the nursery with the tiny trees, you can feel the difference between the shade and the sun.”
According to a city report, 19% of the city is shaded by trees and the goal is to increase that to 35% in the next 20 years.
The program offers dozens of tree species, including Chinese pistache, insense cedar, yellow bird magnolia, London plane and blue oak.
“Typically people like things with flowers, those tend to be popular in the spring, but then in fall people want fall colors,” she said. “It’s actually a pretty good selection, which is ideal, because the more diverse our urban forest, the more resilient it is to pests and diseases and climate change.”
The species the foundation provides are resilient and the maintenance is pretty minimal aside from a couple pruning sessions during the first five years, she said.
Trees are delivered to homes and residents are given instructions for how to plant the trees. During the first three years, watering is particularly crucial. Robinson recommends watering two to three times per week in the summer and dry periods.
“As long as you give it adequate water, keep grass and weeds away, and apply wood chips, those are the ingredients to make your tree grow faster,” she said.
With that recipe, the foundation’s free trees can start providing decent shade within five years, and at 10 years, provide a nice canopy, Robinson said.
Barriers to tree planting
Teri Duarte is with the CommuniTree Committee in Hollywood Park. The group formed in 2018 to expand the tree canopy in the neighborhood.
The committee works to convince property owners to plant free trees from the Tree Foundation.
“The only way to expand tree canopy in our neighborhood is private property,” Duarte said. “There really isn’t public property.”
The committee provides tree-planting volunteers for residents who aren’t able to plant the trees in their front yards themselves.
“It’s a big planting day in the fall,” she said. “We go throughout the neighborhood planting the trees that have been accepted.”
It might be anywhere from six to 28 trees planted in the fall, depending on how many residents agree to participate, Duarte said, adding the group has planted about 190 trees total in Hollywood Park.
One issue Duarte has found with the free trees is people often think that they don’t need to do any maintenance after the first couple years. But residents still need to pay attention.
“Increasingly, with climate change and periods of drought, not watering the trees in the summer causes them to go into decline,” she said.
Every spring, the committee goes out and checks on all the trees that have been planted. They leave information cards for residents with checklists of what their tree might need.
“Maybe it needs to be watered more, maybe they need to put a mulch donut ring around it,” she said. “It is our hope that this encourages and informs people on how to maintain their tree.”
A big reason for all this effort: health. Trees act as air filters, taking out particulate matter from car emissions, Duarte said.
“People who live in neighborhoods with a lot of tree canopy just have overall better health,” she said. “There’s a lot of benefits and people don’t realize it.”
Areas of need
United Latinos, a local nonprofit that fosters civic engagement, has teamed up with the Tree Foundation with the goal of planting 1,000 trees in South Sacramento in a year. The project launched in October with funding from the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.
“South Sacramento is very much lacking that canopy and urban heat and extreme heat events are something that happen in this area and this region,” said Edwin Cortez, Operations Manager for United Latinos.
There’s a lot of need in underserved communities in South Sacramento and his organization is doing outreach to get more people involved, he added.
“This provides more trees, more shade, but ultimately provides a huge benefit for the community,” Cortez said. “It also allows them as individuals to make a difference by pledging for a tree or getting a tree on their property.”
Cortez’s organization has been helping build the community movement in South Sacramento. This month they held an Earth Day event and a tree planting with the Sacramento Jobs Corps, where more than 70 youth got involved in planting and maintaining trees.
