Park Place Blog

On October 25th, Park Place received 14 new street trees as part of the TreeVitalize program that will plant 20,000 street trees in Pittsburgh by 2012.  More than 26 Park Place neighbors and friends came out on a rainy autumn Saturday afternoon to plant the trees and help green Park Place. In about four hours, these volunteers learned how to properly plant trees, take care of recently planted street trees, and successfully planted all the trees.

The GPPNA Street Tree Committee (Hyla Willis, Joni Rabinowitz, and Henry Schumacher) worked with Marijke Hecht, TreeVitalize Director at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and the Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest to apply for the program and organize the all-volunteer tree plantings.  Park Place is one of 20 neighborhoods participating in the TreeVitalize program to plant 900 trees throughout Pittsburgh this fall.

Street trees not only make the neighborhood look nice, but they provide a variety of tangible benefits for the neighborhood including: reducing home energy costs, providing habitat for birds and wildlife, increasing home prices, reducing storm run-off and river pollution, and providing cleaner air to breathe.  You can help restore Pittsburgh’s urban forest and improve the quality of life in Park Place by planting a tree on your property.

The GPPNA Street Tree Committee would like to thank the participating property owners for helping to green the neighborhood, all the volunteers who came out to help, Marijke Hecht at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest, the Pittsburgh department of public works for sidewalk cuts, State Representative Joseph Preston, TruValue for donating watering buckets, and the East End Co-op for providing snacks.

If you would like to learn more about the benefits of street trees, how to take care of street trees on your property, or want to help grow Pittsburgh’s urban forest, contact the Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest (http://www.pittsburghforest.org/).  For more information about the TreeVitalize program, check out the website (http://www.treevitalize.net/index.aspx).  If you would like a street tree for your property during the Fall 2009 TreeVitalize planting, contact Henry Schumacher (hschumacher78@gmail.com, 412.657.8148) this winter.