Arbor Day 2017 Poster Contest

Tree Pittsburgh is excited to announce our 2017 Arbor Day Poster Contest!

In Pennsylvania, Arbor Day is celebrated on the last Friday of April (the best time to plant a tree in our region). For 2017, Arbor Day falls on Friday, April 28.

All 5th grade students in Allegheny County are eligible to enter their school’s poster contest. Each school may submit one poster to the Arbor Day contest by the deadline of March 31, 2017. Posters must include the theme, “Trees Produce….” with the artist filling in the blank, in the poster design. For more information on contest rules including originality, submission process, and medium, please see the official poster rules. Submissions must be accompanied by the artist information sheet.

To help your students celebrate Arbor Day, check out our inter-disciplinary curriculum! The guidebook provides Arbor Day information and classroom exercises to help you educate your students about the benefits of trees and their inherent value to communities, people, and environmental health. Your students have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding and importance of trees by creating an interpretive poster and participating in the contest.

The top 3 artists will receive a gift card for school supplies for their classroom (1st place – $100, 2nd place – $75, 3rd place – $50), as well as an educational classroom visit by Tree Pittsburgh staff, a classroom teaching Tree Kit, and their artwork featured in Tree Pittsburgh promotions. We encourage you, your fellow fifth-grade teachers, and your school’s art teacher to participate in this fun and educational program. If you or your colleagues have any questions regarding the contest, please contact Joe Stavish, Community Education Coordinator, at 412-781-8733 or by emailing joe@treepittsburgh.org.

If you’d like to share this with other fifth grade teachers, please include the formal welcome letter!

2016 Volunteers of the Year

Environmental nonprofit Tree Pittsburgh is proud to announce its 2016 Volunteers of the Year. These corporations and individuals have given of their time and services to further the mission of the organization to protect and restore Pittsburgh’s urban forest through community tree planting and care, education, and advocacy.

Kathy Lafferty of Carnegie was named the individual Volunteer of the Year for her work with clients at the Goodwill of Southwestern PA greenhouse. Through a partnership with GWSPA, Tree Pittsburgh works with Goodwill clients to grow our tree seedlings in their on-site greenhouse. Lafferty answered the call to a volunteer job description and traveled weekly from Carnegie to the greenhouse. She worked with GWSPA clients, teaching them about seedlings and carefully guiding them through transplanting and tending.

“This program would not be the success it is without Kathy,” said Megan Higgins Palomo, Tree Pittsburgh Heritage Nursery Manager.

The Pittsburgh office of KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm, was awarded the Corporate Partner of the Year for their dedication to the organization. During 2016, KPMG participated in 4 separate volunteer events, contributing over 150 volunteer hours. In addition to mulching events, they helped to plant 50 new trees at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Garden in the Hill District.

“KPMG showed a real commitment to Tree Pittsburgh’s mission this year,” said Jake Milofsky, Tree Pittsburgh Tree Care and Restoration Coordinator. “It was a lot of fun forming a relationship with their team during the course of their projects with us this year.”

KPMG LLP, the United States member firm of KPMG International, traces its origins back to 1897 and since 1994 has been a limited liability partnership registered in the state of Delaware. With more than 29,000 professionals in 106 offices, including more than 1,900 partners, KPMG is a leader among professional services firms.

Jimmy Lohr and greenSinner, a Lawrenceville-based floral and event production company, received the Creative Partner of the Year award. For several years, Jimmy has volunteered his services to provide décor for Tree Pittsburgh’s annual fundraising event, Arbor Aid. In 2016, greenSinner supplied all of the décor for the 10th anniversary Root Ball gala. Lohr and greenSinner’s contributions amount to thousands of dollars of in-kind services.

“Jimmy’s talent for design helped to make all of Tree Pittsburgh’s events a great success,” said Danielle Crumrine, Tree Pittsburgh Executive Director.

Thank you to all our volunteers who made 2016 our biggest year yet!

Buy a Real Christmas Tree

As a pro-tree organization, you may be surprised to learn Tree Pittsburgh encourages the purchase of real pines to celebrate the holidays! However, buying a real Christmas tree is a great way to promote open green space in the state of Pennsylvania. This year, you can support local farmers and Tree Pittsburgh by pre-ordering your tree right here.

Christmas tree farms stabilize soil, protect water supplies, and provide refuge for wildlife while creating scenic green belts. Often, Christmas trees are grown on soils that could not support other crops.

Another way buying a real Christmas tree helps the environment is that fake trees are made from petroleum products manufactured in other parts of the world and travel to the US via freight and diesel fuel. Finally, real Christmas trees absorb carbon dioxide and other gases, emitting fresh oxygen.

Buying real trees also supports the local economy. Real Christmas trees support Pennsylvania farmers. Did you know Pennsylvania is #2 in the nation for Christmas tree production? It’s true! All but two counties in the entire state support tree farms. Buying local, live Christmas trees supports thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania.

To learn more about Christmas trees in Pennsylvania, visit the Pennsylvania Christmas Tree Grower’s Association.

Heritage Nursery Tree Sale

Shop native trees and shrubs at our fall plant sale!

Tree Pittsburgh’s fall plant sale features a selection of native trees and shrubs for your home garden. Natives not only look beautiful in the landscape, but provide important habitats for pollinators and other wildlife. This year’s fall sale features 12 carefully curated species for pre-order. Each plant on our list has been selected by our foresters and horticulturists for its exceptional ecological value, habitat support, and native hardiness and were all hand grown at the Tree Pittsburgh Heritage Nursery.

Orders can be placed by visiting this link by October 23. Pick up your plants at the annual Tree Pittsburgh Ginkgo Fest on Saturday, October 29 from 1:00-4:00 p.m. at the Highland park Maple Grove Shelter. Merchandise, logo apparel, and additional plant material will also be available for purchase at the event. All sale proceeds benefit Tree Pittsburgh’s mission to protect and restore our urban forest.

Pitt and CMU Freshmen help Tree Pittsburgh make a huge impact

Friday, August 28 Tree Pittsburgh had a truly epic day of field activities with help from both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Both schools held city-wide service projects as part of their freshman orientation activities, and Tree Pittsburgh was fortunate enough to host projects with both schools.

In the morning, CMU sent 20 new students to West Penn Park, where they helped Tree Pittsburgh staff remove invasive vines that threatened to suffer many of the newly planted trees on the hillside. The City of Pittsburgh provided a dump truck for disposal of the vines, and the group managed to fill the entire truck!

In the afternoon, Pitt sent 26 students to East Liberty Boulevard where they helped staff spread 50 years of fresh mulch on trees along the median! This mulch will help trees retain moisture and prevents weeds from growing as well.

We truly appreciate the help offered by these volunteers, and were very happy to be part of their introduction to Pittsburgh!

The goats are back!

The goats are back to their old stomping grounds.

Goats will be grazing on invasive vines and knotweed in West Penn Park beginning Friday, July 29. The grazing is expected to last three weeks. Once the area is clear, student volunteers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh will continue to clear woodier vegetation from the site to prep it for tree planting.

Tree Pittsburgh first brought goats to this site in July of 2014 as part of a pilot project to clear hillsides for restoration. The goats will graze on a new section of West Penn Park visible from Brereton Street in Polish Hill.

Pittsburgh City Council in March voted unanimously to bring the goats to sections of Highland, Emerald View and West Penn Park. Tree Pittsburgh is contracting the herd of 11 goats and their protector donkey Hobo from Steel City Grazers, through a grant from the Allegheny County Conservation District.

The goats will make their way to Highland Park and Emerald View later this summer.

Weather, climate change and the urban forest

The weather in Pittsburgh is never consistent. From Snowmageden to the Polar Vortex, our winters over the last six years have provided us with a new vocabulary. While summer weather hasn’t provided any new words, it has been just as unpredictable: from summers where we had to do virtually no watering of trees to summers where we couldn’t water all of them, we’ve had some drastically different climates. Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a specific place and time, and climate is the weather conditions in an area in general or over a long period.

The warm winter this year caused Director of Urban Forestry Matt Erb’s Crocus vernus “Pickwick” to flower March 8. While plenty of data and statisics are recorded daily to provide weather and climate analysis, quantifying the impact a changing climate has on plants is more difficult. For example, a seasoned gardener may notice that their Brussels sprouts didn’t grow one year due to poor weather or that their figs failed to ripen due to a shorter growing season. Some gardeners even keep journals noting flower or harvest times.

The practice of tracking seasonal natural phenomena is known as phenology. By making observations of the natural world around us (especially plants) and recording this data in a database, the impacts of climate change on plants can be studied.

Over the last four years. Matt has used his smart phone to take photos of the first Crocus flowers that bloom in his garden. In 2013, it was March 29. In 2014, March 31. In 2015, flowers bloomed April 1. This year, they bloomed three weeks early on March 8. While there is typically a week difference between blooms on the sunny side of his garden vs. the shady side, the difference this year was only two days. These flowering times also closely relate to the flowering of Matt’s Cornelian cherry dogwood (Cornus mas). Another observation of 2016 is that no honey bees have been present on these flowers, which may or may not be tied to the early blooms but certainly illustrates the potential impacts of climate change and the whole ecosystem.

While Matt’s casual backyard observations show this year is an anomaly, overall flowering times are becoming earlier. Longterm phenological data has shown many flowering plants that Henry David Thoreau observed at Walden Pond are flowering approximately three weeks earlier today than in Thoreau’s time. Phenology can also be used to record observations of insects, mammals and other living creatures, helping to paint a larger picture of how the timing of nature and climate is changing and what impact that may have on the larger ecosystem.

To learn more about phenology in your backyard, visit the USA National Phenology Network.

The Manchester Fruit Tree Project

Tree Pittsburgh is excited to partner with Manchester Academic Charter School (MACS) and the Drew Mathieson Center for Horticultural & Agricultural Technology (DMC) at Manchester Bidwell Corporation to implement a small fruit tree orchard in Manchester. This project roots from Tree Pittsburgh, Manchester residents, and additional stakeholders working to create the ReLeaf Manchester and Chateau plan. Not only will this project play a small role in increasing tree canopy cover in Manchester, but it will also provide a project-based learning environment for MACS students and increase the food capcity in Manchester. The Manchester Fruit Tree Project will integrate with MACS’ Airplane Garden, providing an opportune environment to educate students and Manchester residents about urban fruit tree orchards. Eight trees of three different species – pawpaw, serviceberry, and Asian pear – will be planted on Earth Day, April 22, 2016.

MACS is a foundational part of the Manchester community. They strive to foster the dreams of all children by providing an outstanding and dynamic education in a nurturing environment, wih an emphasis on extra-curricular enrichment, hands-on learning, and community involvement. The DMC is one of Western Pennsylvania’s premier educational greenhouses. They are located on the Manchester Bidwell Corporation campus and provide a home to Bidwell Training Center’s horticulture technology major. In addition to wholesale plant sales, the DMC’s unique nonprofit operating model includes youth educational programming and community engagements to inspire and expand urban sustainabile agriculture and environmental outreach throughout the region. Tree Pittsburgh, MACS, and the DMC are excited for the great potential this project has, and are thankful for the support from the Manchester Citizens Corporation, Manchester Tree Tenders, and the Manchester Greening Group.

This project is one of Pittsburgh’s innovative community initiatives supported in part by a Seed Award from the Sprout Fund. Sproud Seed Awards are modest financial awards ($500-$10,000) that provide critical financial support for projects and programs in the early stages of development – when just a small amount of investment has the potential to yield big results in the community.

Please contact Rachel King with any questions or to get involved.

Trees in Allegheny Cemetery get some much needed pruning from Bartlett volunteers

Tree Pittsburgh Tree Care Assistant Terrance Sheffey, Bartlett employees Andrew Tomaskovic, John Reitmeyer, Jeremy Newton, Sean Dingess, Burlton Griffith, and Frank Booths.

Early this spring, Tree Pittsburgh had the pleasure of working with a group of arborists and dendricians from the Bartlett Tree Experts who volunteered their time to help with structural pruning of 20 young trees in Allegheny Cemetery. These trees, mostly elms, can be seen growing along the inside of the cemetery wall along Stanton Avenue. Tree Pittsburgh’s Tree Care and Restoration Coordinator, Jake Milofsky, expressed the importance of pruning these trees.

“We’ve found that Princeton American elm trees grow extremely fast and therefore need to be pruned aggressively during their establishment phase,” said Milofsky. “These trees had already grown beyond our reach, so it was great to have the help of professionals with tree climbing abilities to conduct this extremely valuable work.”

Tree Pittsburgh Tree Care Assistant, Terrance Sheffey, receives a lesson on tree climbing equipment from Bartlett Arborist, Burlton Griffith.

The crew of eight volunteers worked for three hours on a Saturday morning in late March to prune the trees, and the Allegheny Cemetery assisted the project by disposing of the many cut branches. Burlton Griffith, a Bartlett Arborist, enjoyed working on the project. “We are thrilled to be part of the Tree Tender mission and look forward to working with Tree Pittsburgh again in the future!” he said.

Bartlett workers climbed trees to carefully prune them.

August Wilson Center Silva Cell Trees

We’ve received a lot of questions about the trees outside of August Wilson Center in the 900 block of Liberty Avenue Downtown. Tree Pittsburgh planted those 10 trees using new Silva Cell technology in 2009. This pilot project was the first installation of Silva Cells in Pennsylvania. The trees were arguably the best-looking trees in all of Downtown thanks to the extra TLC they received over the years.

The trees went from healthy to dead in the matter of a few months. We suspect this is due to the harsh winter and high salt usage. We are disappointed to see such a successful project fail due to something avoidable.

If you want to make sure your trees don’t meet the same fate, read our information on proper winterization and salt alternatives.  We have written a proposal for funding to replace the trees, so stay tuned!