FEBRUARY 2026: HILLSBORO NEIGHBORHOODS | UO NATURAL AREA | MENTORSHIP

A Place For Celebration

A unique Hillsboro staging site makes for incredible community building

If you’ve ever volunteered at a Friends of Trees planting, you can picture a typical event staging site. A parking lot filled with trucks, some pop-up tents over registration and a breakfast spread. At our Hillsboro planting last month, volunteers encountered something a little different. They walked through a heart-shaped arch to register at the entrance of M&M Marketplace, a multinational mercado in the heart of Hillsboro’s Calle Diez neighborhood.

Volunteers sipped coffee and ate pastries at one of the dining areas inside, among the 80 independent business stalls and food vendors. Since the first planting there in 2023, M&M Marketplace has become a go-to staging site for Hillsboro plantings, a partnership that Neighborhood Trees Specialist Mario Catani is grateful for. “It’s the perfect spot in the heart of the planting area,” Mario says. “And we get to show the marketplace and how cool it is to people in Hillsboro who haven’t been there before.”

Volunteers set out to plant 40 trees throughout Calle Diez and Downtown Hillsboro, including some trees at Lincoln Street Elementary School. One of the young crew members was so excited to plant at her school! This event also marked the 300th tree that Friends of Trees has added to the Calle Diez neighborhood.

By the time crews got back to M&M Marketplace, the market was bustling with people shopping at stalls or getting lunch at one of the many food trucks—tacos al pastor carved right from the spit, creamy horchatas, and so much more—a perfectly lively scene to get swept up into after a morning planting trees in the neighborhood.

“The best moments of the day for me were after the planting,” Mario says. “Hanging out with volunteers on a sunny day, supporting the vendors there, especially with everything going on right now. We got to have that moment to bond and celebrate the day.”

Read more here.

GET INVOLVED

Feel good. Do Good. Plant Trees — Join us for our 37th season!

We’re approaching the end of the planting season, so come get your hands muddy while you can! Whether it’s in a neighborhood or natural area, we would love your help building community with trees and native plants.

Here are some upcoming volunteer events:

March 7, Natural area planting, Stillwell Greenway, Beaverton
March 7, Neighborhood planting, East/Southeast Portland
March 14, Neighborhood planting, Oregon City
March 14, Natural area planting, West Bethany Creek, Bethany
March 21, Natural area planting, Hidden Falls Natural Area, Happy Valley

General volunteers: register here for Portland Metro area events, and check out the Eugene event calendar here. We can’t wait to plant trees with you!

Crew Leaders and Assistants—watch your inbox for Crew Leader News on the first of the month! Trained Crew Leaders sign-up for events here.

THE EUGENE BRANCH

Our Eugene Team partnered with University of Oregon for a natural area planting project

As University of Oregon students cross the Willamette River to get to the football stadium on game day, they’ll pass through the Willamette River Natural Area where they’ll see trees that Friends of Trees volunteers planted this year.

In 2022, the university designated 20+ acres of property as the Willamette River Natural Area which presents a great opportunity to restore and expand the riparian forest there. The planting area included a few different sections, including an oak savannah and a grove with 19 different tree species native to the Willamette Valley. Both of these areas were designed not just for restoration but with educational purposes in mind, too. The project planners wanted the event to empower students by involving them in every step from the design, event preparation and teaching tree planting skills.

“We focused our outreach on getting students to volunteer so that they could feel ownership over the positive change these trees will have on the campus where they spend their time, ”

-Emily Hamblen, Campus Natural Areas Steward at UO.

Student volunteers were joined by other community members on a beautiful sunny day at the end of January. Together, the 84 volunteers planted 174 trees in a single morning, well on the way to the 455 total for this project. These trees will add to the riparian buffer along the river and shade the multi-use bike path for walkers and bikers. Funding for the project comes from an Oregon Department of Forestry Urban and Community Forestry grant and includes three years of watering and student tree stewards to help the trees establish.

Read more here.

Planting Day With Better Chances

Mentored youth plant seven trees on Marine Drive

-Communications Intern Tony S.

I pull into a narrow strip of land on Marine Drive in North Portland on a crisp January morning. Today we are planting seven trees with about ten BIPOC youth from the nonprofit Better Chances. We trickle in. This land will be developed into housing, and we are here to help add some extra foliage for cooling, shade, and the many benefits trees provide.

I’m here as a participant in Friends of Trees’ Adult Urban Forestry Workforce Training Program (AUF), and this is my first assignment as a communications intern. I’m joining two Friends of Trees staff and four fellow AUF graduates in leadership roles who are here to facilitate the planting.

Smoke rises from a little fire barrel. It helps to dispel some of the morning chill. A few kids in their early teens gravitate to the edge of a frozen stream nearby. They throw sticks onto the ice in hopes of a satisfying sploosh. In the clearing is a table with plenty of snacks and supplies. It’s a cozy vibe.

Better Chances focuses on academic support and vibrant extracurricular activities that build positive youth development. They do things such as play basketball, go to BBQ cook outs, and white-water rafting. There is focus on curiosity, play and sensory enjoyment of nature.

After a planting demonstration, we split into groups to get some more individualized practice. We definitely have a few side quests. Read more here.

Friends of Trees Selected for NW Natural’s Programs of Focus Partnership

Friends of Trees is excited to have been selected as one of NW Natural’s Programs of Focus. This new partnership is an extension of over a decade of support from NW Natural for Friends of Trees based on our aligned values of caring, service and environmental stewardship. NW Natural employees can often be found volunteering at Friends of Trees planting events.

“We’re proud to support Friends of Trees because they’re a partner who exemplifies what caring can look like—bringing together volunteers to plant trees that will have a long-lasting impact for our communities.”

– Sama Shagaga, community affairs at NW Natural.

Programs of Focus is a special three-year collaboration. Five different community partners receive philanthropic funding, in-kind resources, and volunteer support from NW Natural. NW Natural also facilitates knowledge and resource sharing among the cohort of programs.

Other Programs in the cohort include ABC House, Council for the Homeless, ReFIT – Remodeling for Independence Together, and Youth Villages. Read more here.

P.S. Have you been following our mascot Garry Oak’s adventures in The Garry Diaries?

GET A TREE | DONATE | VOLUNTEER

The #FriendsofTreesWay is planting trees—and so much more!

(503) 282-8846: Portland office

(541) 632-3683: Eugene office

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friendsoftrees.org/eugene

Learn more about how Friends of Trees greens our region + grows community through checking out other issues of Treemail here https://friendsoftrees.org/news-resources/treemail.