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
TreePhilly Manager Erica Smith Fichman shows her "love" of trees. We are preparing for the Emerald Ash Borer invasion in the next couple of years and expect to lose up to 6% of our canopy to this pest. This will leave more gaps in our forest than on the streets. We will be proactively removing those ash trees that could be hazards along streets and trails and will be initially treating at least 1,000 trees. With the goal of increased canopy, rather than just numbers of trees planted each year, we carefully examined our tree planting specifications to ensure that the trees we did plant had the greatest chance to grow to maturity and do the work a full canopy can provide. We changed the soil specifications, required the replacement of all the soil in new tree pits, and require weekly watering throughout the summer. This has necessitated much closer moni- toring of our contractors, but we believe the results will be healthier trees growing long past the average life span of urban street trees. What are the unique pleasures and challenges of urban forestry in your City? JB: Philadelphia began as a city that values natural resources, and it is deeply engrained in the civic ethos. William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, wrote specific instructions to his commissioners in 1681: "Let every house be placed, if the person pleases, in the middle of its plat, as to the breadthway of it, so that there may be ground on each side for gardens or orchards, or fields, that it may be a greene country towne, which will never be burnt & always wholesome." Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s spurred City Council to seek a system to provide safe drinking water to the citizens of the city, building our first waterworks in 1801. The Lemon Hill Estate was officially dedicated in 1854 as a public park to "protect and improve the purity of the Schuylkill water supply" and was the first segment of what would become a 9,200-acre (3723 ha) Fairmount Park system. Philadelphia went on to acquire the land around all the source water streams and estu- aries beyond the Schuylkill River, ensuring the high- est water quality for our citizens. That connection between the preservation of land and water in the city, and its importance to the health of the city and its citizens, is a legacy that continues to inspire and guide our work today. However, that legacy has not translated into appro- priate levels of funding to maintain and enhance our urban forest. Even with the influx of capital funding for new tree plantings, our funding to maintain our canopy has been declining. And with an aging workforce, we will be losing significant institutional knowledge and commitment to public sector tree work over the next five years. Philadelphia's history also includes the introduction of the row house to the US in the 17th century. However, these rows of homes along narrow streets make tree plantings a challenge in many of our neighborhoods. There are areas of the city where street tree planting is not only difficult, but actively resisted. One homeowner wrote this editorial in response to our efforts to plant more trees in his neighborhood: I use the title "Lion in the Streets" as a meta- phor to draw attention to the fact that we are in danger again—and not from the four-legged beasts of the jungle that we all recognize as dangerous—but to the danger of our own planting because here we go again with a new initiative to turn South Philly green and to plant more trees on the sidewalks ... So let me say it again, kill a tree, save your house and com- munity. Don't let the lions eat the front or the back of your homes. However, those same neighborhoods are filling with young people who long for the relief of green on the streets and in their small neighborhood parks, and they are our most active supporters. We continue to look for new ways to inform the public about the beauty and benefits of trees. 18 City Trees