Sacramento is the fourth city in the world to feature the "Blue Trees Project" ephemeral artwork by Australian artist Konstantin
Dimopoulos. Sacramento Tree Foundation volunteers helped Dimopoulos paint the trees with tree-safe pigmented water.
www.kondimopoulos.com/thebluetrees Photo by Steve Shurtz
As our plane descended over jasmine rice fields to the
Sacramento airport, the rice gave way to a beautiful, lush urban
forest and a beguiling, rectangular arboretum of giants that
turned out to be right across from our hotel.
The 40-acre Capitol Park grounds were like Candy Land
for arborists—and as colorful. In the Park and elsewhere,
Sacramento quietly showed off brilliant fall color on deciduous
trees like maples and Chinese pistache, interspersed with the
exclamation points of palms and the abiding, shadowy greens and
reddish-browns of redwoods. Clearly I am Northern Californianaïve, but I was struck by the city's ability to luxuriantly grow
such a range of trees found on both East Coast and West.
The SMA-specific conference was shorter this year, but the
compression only served to speed along making and reinvigorating connections. Compression also laser-sharpened the conference content, which focused on risk assessment and mitigation.
Then, many SMAers stayed on for the two-day Partners in
Community Forestry Conference, such as Owen Croy, who
presented on "SNAP: Surrey's Natural Areas Partnership."
In SMA Conference Host Joe Benassini, we were lucky to
once again experience a gracious, friendly, and deft host.
Thank you, Joe and staff, for making this a fantastic 48th
Annual Conference. Here, other attendees reflect on their SMA
Sacramento Conference experience.
—Michelle Sutton, Editor, City Trees
My favorite part
of the conference was the A300
Specifications and Risk Mitigation workshop held on Monday
afternoon and led by Gordon Mann and Guy Meilleur. Besides
being held in beautiful Capitol Park with my first glimpse of
sequoias, it provided educational hands-on experience in risk
assessment. The insight of others was immeasurable!
—Paula Chope, City Forester, City of Dublin, Ohio, Parks &
Open Space
(left) Sacramento's urban forest is an intriguing mix of palms, redwoods, and deciduous hardwoods like tulip trees and sugar maples.
www.urban-forestry.com
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