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
What are some misconceptions MAs from other parts of the world might have about urban for- estry in Philly? JB: Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the US, and 13 percent of our land is public open space, so visitors are often surprised to see how green Philadelphia is—from our Center City to the farthest reaches of our neighborhoods. William Penn laid out the city's grid to include five squares which domi- nate the landscape as much as any of our beautiful buildings. City Hall (on the center square) sits at the beginning of the largest stretch of contiguous urban parkland in the country—15 miles (24 km)! The parkland goes through East and West Fairmount Park along the Schuylkill River and transects the 1,800-acre (728 ha) Wissahickon Valley Park at the far northwest edge of the city. In a city as large and challenged as Philadelphia, with so many social problems to contend with, one might assume that there would not be much civic engage- ment around natural resource issues. Fortunately for us, citizens here are powerfully engaged in help- ing us to maintain and improve our urban forest. Our partners at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society have been training "Tree Tenders" for over 20 years, and through them have planted thousands of street trees. Philadelphia Parks & Recreation has more than 100 "Friends" groups committed to our neigh- borhood and watershed parks, contributing over 200,000 hours a year, and hundreds of corporate and individual volunteers who plant trees on our streets and in our forests throughout the year. What gives you extra pride when you think about your city forestry program? JB: Over the past seven years, the public and private sector, citizens, and City staff have planted over 100,000 trees, one quarter of which were planted by citizens. When we accepted the goal of increas- ing the tree canopy in Philadelphia to 30% in every neighborhood, the City as a whole was planting fewer than 5,000 trees a year. Our first step was to have an Urban Tree Canopy assessment done through the US Forest Service. That study confirmed that we had 20% tree canopy overall and actually could reach our goal, but that planting on public spaces alone would not be enough: we would also have to plant on private property. Philadelphia's residents control the majority of the city's tree canopy and have most of the land to plant trees, with "Single Family Twin/Row" zoning areas having most of the land available to support tree plantings. We knew that our efforts would have to Philadelphia Quick Facts Human Population: 1,526,000 Street Tree Population: 135,000 Park Tree Population: 1,050,000 UF Budget: $4 million UF Staff FTEs/Number of Staff: 55 Hundreds of volunteers, like these from University City Green, help Philly grow the tree canopy. 20 City Trees