by Derek Schubert, ASLA; SCTT Coordinator
The Sierra Club Tree Team (SCTT) plants and prunes public trees in Oakland, and we are looking for some landscape architects and their friends to help us keep up the good work. Planting or pruning with us on the weekend is a great way to complement an office-based job. We welcome anyone who wants to help, not only Oakland residents.
The SCTT works to increase the City of Oakland’s tree canopy so that every Oakland resident, worker, and visitor can enjoy the environmental, community, and aesthetic benefits of trees. Oakland used to run a robust municipal program of planting and maintaining public trees, but the City Council cut the funding from it in the 2008 recession. We have planted 1,900 trees since our start in 2010, and pruned 1,000 street-trees in the last two years. Along with our partners, the Oakland Parks & Recreation Foundation and Keep Oakland Beautiful, we received a grant from CAL FIRE (under the California Climate Investments program) to plant 1,300 more trees in Oakland in the next two years.
Our 2016-’17 planting season will begin in November and run through June. Please join us at one of our events, which we hold almost every Saturday, along with some Sundays and some weekdays. We'll provide the shovels, gloves, and other supplies. Our most dedicated volunteers get to be “crew captains”, leading teams of new volunteers.
Besides helping as a planter or pruner, you can offer professional expertise. The opportunities have outgrown what we can do with our existing volunteers.
- Preparing conceptual tree-planting plans for a school, park, or median. Schools, especially, have too much asphalt and too few trees, and these harsh settings are stunting children's learning, attention, and social skills. The SCTT’s state grant can pay for the trees, but we need to make sure we plant the right tree in the right place. Fees for design services will depend on the site: some may have no money and ask for pro bono design, but others may be able to pay.
- Identifying existing trees, so we can plant others of the same kind around it — or not, if the existing one is causing problems.
- Helping to lobby the City Council to restore funding to the Tree Services division. They will start discussing the next two-year budget in a few months.
And we can always use donations to help pay for expenses not covered by our grant, such as tools for pruning, greenwaste dumping fees, and contractor fees to remove pavement and open the spots for new trees.
For more information, to sign up, or to donate:
http://www.meetup.com/sanfranciscobay/ (sign up to volunteer — also includes announcements of Sierra Club hikes and other events)
http://sierraclub.org/sfbay/tree-planting (one-page info on the SCTT, with a donation link)
http://www.treesforOaklandFlatlands.org (more extensive info on the SCTT)
Email: SCTreePlanting@gmail.com
