City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/475555
be "citizen-based" and work at the community level to reach those homeowners. That objective helped us to structure our work. We have planted more street trees than at any time since Fairmount Park assumed responsibility for street tree planting in 1913. And we developed the TreePhilly program which connects Philadelphia residents with the resources they need to plant and care for trees and to grow our urban forest. The Fairmount Park Conservancy helped us to secure pri- vate funding for our yard tree program (through Wells Fargo Bank) and we have given away over 8,000 trees to homeowners over the past three years. Our program attracted the attention of a local mar- keting firm (Masterminds) who created the "City of Arborly Love" campaign. This has raised the awareness of the value of trees in our city, particu- larly through social media, and has provided more user-friendly access to our department's tree plant- ing and maintenance programs. Benjamin Franklin Parkway is the tree-lined boulevard that connects City Hall with the Philadelphia Art Museum in Center City Philadelphia. What are your best performing street trees? Which ones are you trying to use more of, and which ones less? JB: We have historically planted many American sycamores (Platanus occidentalis) and London plane trees (P. x acerifolia 'Bloodgood') along our larger streets and parkways, where they remain iconic. About 4% of our street tree plantings continue to be those two taxa. Locusts, particularly the thornless honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos var. inermis), are also a very reliable standard. Because of our narrow streets and overhead wires, we plant more cherries than any other species, about 30%. We are planting hedge maple (Acer campestre), trident maple (A. buergeranum) and pur- pleblow maple (A. truncatum) sparingly and trying to limit the species that we have used extensively in the past: amur maple (A. ginnala) and paperbark maple (A. griseum) and certain red maple cultivars like A. rubrum 'Autumn Flame' and 'Red Sunset'. We 22 City Trees