Urban reforestation on the northside
By Beth Connors-Manke
When Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, gave her acceptance speech in 2004, she ended by telling of her early years in Kenya:
“I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents.”
“Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.”
Recognizing the ecological destruction that was threatening rural African communities, in 1977 Maathai started the Green Belt Movement. The group’s solution to lack of firewood, clean drinking water, shelter, and a distressed local economy and agriculture? Trees.
Because the local women knew first—and best—the damage being done to the land and their communities, the Green Belt Movement focused on trees because they “provide fuel, food, shelter, and income to support their [the women’s] children’s education and household needs. The activity also creates employment and improves soils and watersheds,” Maathai said in her speech.
By 2004, the Green Belt Movement had planted over 30 million trees.
Urban forests
While urban Lexington may seem a far cry from rural Kenya, all those things that Maathai identified—firewood, clean drinking water, shelter, and a distressed local economy and agriculture—are at issue on the northside. They may manifest differently, but we share some of the same problems. In both cases, trees act as a weather vane telling us which way the wind is blowing.
In August 2010, Kansas artist Matt Burke began assembling his 70-foot sculpture made of what appeared to be woven wooden slats. The sculpture sat in front of the Lexington Art League in Castlewood Park, near one of the large bur oaks that graced the front of the Loudoun House. On a windy day, the oak came down, crushing part of Burke’s sculpture.
Burke persevered, coming back in October 2010 to finish a revised version of the sculpture. Within a week, the sculpture was assaulted again. Gary Maynard, drunk and sleeping on the streets, said he burned a large part of the artwork in order to stay warm.
This story reveals three things: first, Burke’s sculpture was cursed. Second, Lexington has some aged trees that Mother Nature is sending off to retirement, whether by wind shear, ice storm, or insect infestations like the Emerald Ash Bore. As these trees die, the city loses an essential part of the ecosystem. Third, the northside is home to many Lexingtonians without homes and without jobs. As ridiculous as Maynard’s story sounds (especially if you had seen the part of the artwork that he burned), it does speak a truth: he had no shelter and he needed warmth.
The northside is at a deficit economically, ecologically, and agriculturally; we city dwellers could probably learn something from Maathai’s Green Belt Movement.
3 million, not 30 million
Many praise Lexington for it’s beauty, whether it’s the visitor who travels into the county on the rolling hills flanked by horse farms or the native who has grown up with the beauty of the Bluegrass. That being said, that beauty is fairly devoid of trees.
According to Tim Queary, an Urban Forester in LFUCG’s Division of Environmental Policy, “Lexington-Fayette County has a very low existing tree canopy estimated at 7.2% because of all the surrounding horse farms and development. The USDA Forest Service ranks Fayette County as the second least forested county in Kentucky just below Bourbon County. American Forests.org recommends that cities maintain an overall tree canopy cover of at least 40% to help mitigate the negative effects of urbanization.”
“It is hard to say just how many trees Lexington-Fayette County needs to plant in order to reach the recommended goal but if my math is correct, we would need to plant an additional 3,000,000 large shade trees,” said Queary.
Yes, 3 million.
Before you get overwhelmed and give up before you even finish this article, think about it this way: since Lexington has about 300,000 people, that’s about 10 trees per person, which, Queary says, “really isn’t much if you think about it.”
No, it’s not, especially if you remember that the Green Belt Movement has planted more than 30 million trees.
Hurdles
That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of challenges. Lexington-Fayette County’s development pattern with the outlying farms, expanding residential and commercial developments (think: Hamburg), and dense urban core requires that we think creatively about where and how to plant trees. Much of the land in the county is privately owned and made unavailable to the community, limiting to some extent our ability to increase our canopy cover. Let me give two examples that stand as a contrast to Lexington’s land use and development proclivities:
In eastern Kentucky, many forested hills, although privately owned, are often traversed by community members collecting food such as mushrooms and berries. Where coal companies haven’t devastated the land through mountaintop removal practices, many locals experience forests, food production, and landownership in a more organic—rather than antagonistic—relationship.
Cleveland, Ohio, which is a city with sprawling suburbs, began creating a chain of public parks around the city in the early 1900s. Those parks, often called “The Emerald Necklace,” have some open spaces but are generally densely forested, with trails for hikers and paths for runners and bicyclists. Cleveland has it’s own urban planning and ecological problems, but the parks are a good example of a way to provide canopy while serving the public’s need for recreational space.
While Lexington has tried hard to preserve the green around its urban core, that protected green is agricultural land, generally cleared of trees, not thick with them.
Another other challenge is that development practices often hurt the quality of the topsoil, making it hard for trees to thrive, say Jesse Hesley and Sara Hesley, co-owners of Town Branch Tree Experts, Inc. “Neighborhoods that are post-World War II,” Sara said, “are much more likely to have had the topsoil removed or really poor backfill added into the soil.” Add to improper tree planting to the mix, and you have an urban forest that is growing in less than optimal conditions.
A northside Green Belt Movement
In the last several years, pragmatic and inventive thinkers have begun to address our tree deficit.
In 2009, Sherry Maddock and Rona Roberts began an urban orchard in order to increase the availability of fresh food on the northside. They began by planting in an unused parcel of land on their street. Quickly, the urban orchard comprised three locations: The Living Arts and Science Center, the London Ferrell Community Garden, and an area near Fourth and Elm Tree. Maddock also worked with Seedleaf to establish fruit-bearing trees at the Florence Crittenton Home. Asian and European pears, sour cherries, peaches, persimmons, plums, and pawpaws have all taken root since then. All told, they planted 60 fruit trees and 45 berry bushes. The intent of the orchard is that fruit is available to any passerby.
During this process, Maddock and her compatriots were looking for ways to “get some trees in around the edges.”
Considering the hurdles related to Lexington’s development practices, and the county’s need for 3 million more large shade trees, getting some trees in around the edges maybe the best plan for Lexington’s own Green Belt Movement.
Other groups have been tucking more trees into the densely developed northside. In 2009, the North Limestone Neighborhood Association led by Marty Clifford had dogwoods planted along North Limestone to improve the look and feel of the street as it leaves downtown. Although dogwoods are small trees that don’t provide much shade, they do provide some of the other ecological benefits.
That’s really the issue: planting trees is much more than simply a beautification project. Trees shade and cool our homes, clean the air, stabilize soil and prevent erosion, and reduce stormwater run-off. In some very basic ways, they make our city more habitable.
Nancy Sleeth of Blessed Earth, a faith-based educational non-profit focused on environmental stewardship, tells a story that highlights how important trees are in making neighborhoods livable:
“We [Nancy and her husband Matthew] took a walk one day a few years ago through one of the more affluent areas of Lexington. We were blessed by abundant shade, squirrels running overhead, birds, and wildlife. That same day we took a walk in the north end. It was a really hot summer day, and it was at least ten degrees warmer [there]. The contrast was very stark: there were almost no trees, almost no wildlife; people couldn’t even find a place to have their kids play in the shade.”
That experience eventually brought Blessed Earth into a partnership with Castlewood Neighborhood Association, which had been planning a multi-phase tree-planting project. In November, with the help of Town Branch Tree Experts, neighbors, and volunteers, Castlewood planted 18 street trees and worked with the city to have about 12 more trees planted in Castlewood Park. Two of those park trees are bur oaks, donated by Dave Leonard Consulting Arborist, Inc., which will replace bur oaks that have come down in the last year (including the one that crushed Burke’s sculpture).
When I asked Sleeth about that ten-more-trees-per-person statistic, her response was optimistic and much like Maddock’s: people can plant in their own yards, of course—if they have their own yards. But many more trees can be planted on church grounds, in open lots, in easements, in parks.
There are plenty of places trees can be tucked in around the edges, especially in places that aren’t privately owned.
The East End
In her acceptance speech, Maathai laments the damage done to the stream near her home in just 50 years, but it’s clear that the denigration of her homeplace was the catalyst for activism. A similar energy has recently motivated a bricks-and-mortar revitalization of the East End, which has included the restoration of the Lyric, the redevelopment of the former Bluegrass-Aspendale area, and the construction of the William Wells Brown Elementary School and Community Center. Many hope that soon both the portion of the Legacy Trail stretching to the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden and the garden itself will be completed.
The Blue Grass Community Foundation (BGCF), a supporter of the East End revitalization, has begun planning for a tree project to re-green the area. Steve Austin, BGCF’s Vice President of Community Leadership & Engagement, has been working on the project. Austin is a landscape architect who has a long-term vision for “treeing” the area.
“I firmly believe that everyone should live in an urban forest,” Austin said. Living in an area full of trees is “just a better way to live, and it shouldn’t just be because you can afford to live that way.”
The first step will be to plant 36-38 trees in the Shropshire Circle across from William Wells Brown School in the spring. Over the winter, BGCF will be fostering community investment and building the most innovative part of the project: a Youth Urban Tree Corp.
The Youth Urban Tree Corp will be a collaboration with the Fayette County School System in which students train in tree care and maintenance. The East End tree project would serve as the laboratory for these students while also helping relieve residents of some of the burden of street tree care. (Street trees are the responsibility of the property owner, but technically belong to the city because they reside on easements.)
Inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corp, which employed young men through conservation and natural resource projects during the Great Depression, Austin would also like to eventually find ways to pay kids from the East End to do beautification projects in the area, including tree maintenance.
So, for East End youth, more trees could bring more beauty, more science, and perhaps more employment. Add Maddock’s urban orchard, and then there’s also more fresh food. This is what Maathai, who passed away in September, was talking about: trees as the catalyst for a stronger, healthier community—trees for a better life.
If you are doing or have done a tree project on the northside and would like to share the details of your project, email noceditors@yahoo.com.
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