City Trees

trees, because they have enough room to express their natural form," he says. Species list for lagoon shores: • coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) • silver leaf oak (Quercus hypoleucoides) • island oak (Quercus tomentella) • bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) • California buckeye (Aesculus californica) • western redbud (Cercis occidentalis) • toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) • Torrey pine (Pinus torreyana) • Compton oak (Quercus × comptoniae) Some early results are in: "We've lost about 20% of the bigleaf maple, especially those planted in the path of the wind," Kesterson says. "However, in an earlier attempt in 2019 we lost all of the bigleaf maple plantings; we later found out those trees came from seed sourced in Oregon. The current attempt was with local seed, so I'll take this 80% bigleaf maple success as a win." Kesterson says that the rest of the lagoonside species are thus far proving at least 90% successful. For the trees overall, he found that the largest nursery trees at time of planting are all struggling, even in the rich lagoonside soil. The smaller stock, not surprisingly, is establishing more readily and growing faster. Everybody-Wins Tree Selection, and Breaking up Monocultures Kesterson went to college in San Diego and worked as a tree climbing arborist and trainer there before coming to work for the City of Berkeley 13 years ago. With some exceptions, the urban trees in his new city were very different from that of San Diego, so humility was required as he set about learning the trees of Northern California. This gave him compassion for homeowners when he talks with them about replace- ment trees in the public space in front of their properties. "The first thing I do is sit down with them to find out what they care about," he says. After that, Kesterson starts talking specific trees. "No one likes to feel like they don't know some- thing," he says. "If I ask a homeowner the open-ended 'What tree would you like?', they will often blurt out the name of the most recent tree they've seen. But if I come to them with a curated shortlist of three or four taxa that will work best both on the site and within our diversity plan for the block—and if I show them photos of each option and give them a choice >> 34 CityTREES The first major volunteer effort for the Aquatic Park project was held in February of 2024. The tree planters (and trees) got lucky and made it in right before a large California-style atmospheric river rain event let loose on the park. In the foreground, a bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) soaks it all in after the storm. Torrey pine trees (Pinus torreyana) are endemic to a small section of sandstone cliffs in San Diego County where they are pummeled by wind and grow in thin soils. As such, they are a good match for this site in Aquatic Park.

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