After review of our application, an Openlands staff arborist completed a site visit and determined that 16 parkway spots from our list of neighbors who were interested are suitable for planting. The team from Openlands will be planting on Tuesday May 11th.
Very special thanks to GWCA Council member Joel McFarland for making this initiative happen and for helping re-plant our Tree Canopy. Joel has reached out individually to those neighbors whose empty parkway spot have been selected.
Openlands is a local environmental nonprofit and their TreePlanters grants help neighborhoods replace their street trees and grow their parkway canopy. They coordinate with the city, get all underground utilities marked ahead of time, etc. The city does some tree planting on its own, but they are massively backlogged, so Openlands helps fill the gap. Growing our neighborhood tree canopy should help us mitigate stormwater runoff, and is particularly important right now given that we’re likely to lose a lot of trees over the next few years due to the Emerald Ash Borer.
