Tag: community tree planting
Friends of Trees & Portland Urban Forestry Host First Community Planting Event of their New Partnership
Friends of Trees | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information:
Colin May: cell (503) 467-2515; [email protected]
The December 6th North Portland Planting is the first in a new collaboration between Friends of Trees and the City of Portland
Portland, Ore. – Friends of Trees will host its first community planting event as part of its new partnership with Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) Urban Forestry on Saturday December 6, 2025. Community volunteers will gather at Cesar Chavez School in North Portland before planting trees throughout North Portland neighborhoods.
This community planting event is the first of four events this season that Friends of Trees will put on in partnership with Portland Urban Forestry. The new $1.8 million partnership will plant and care for 750 trees across Portland’s most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods. This collaboration is part of the City’s Equitable Tree Canopy program funded by the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF), and reflects a shared commitment to climate resilience, community stewardship, and long-term tree health.
“It’s always exciting to put planning into action, especially when it means bringing volunteers together to plant trees,” says Friends of Trees Executive Director Yashar Vasef. “The efforts we make on a winter morning will mean more shade in these neighborhoods during future summer heat waves.”
Volunteers will plant approximately 100 street and yard trees at residents’ homes as part of this planting event. Every street tree planted through this partnership will receive three years of follow-up care. This includes watering, monitoring, and replacement if needed. Yard tree recipients will receive guidance and support from Friends of Trees to help care for their trees and support long-term success.
Friends of Trees expects about 100 community volunteers to attend (Note: volunteer event is full and registration is closed). City Councilor Sameer Kanal (District 2) plans to be in attendance as well.
- Location: Cesar Chavez School, 5103 N Willis Blvd, Portland, OR 97203
- Time: 8:45 A.M. – 1 P.M. Brief program at 9:00 am before volunteer crews disperse to planting sites.
- Neighborhoods: East Columbia, Kenton, Piedmont, Portsmouth, St Johns, and Woodlawn.
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Friends of Trees (FriendsofTrees.org)
Friends of Trees inspires people to improve the natural world around them through a simple solution: Planting Trees. Together.
Friends of Trees was founded in 1989 by a local community member who loved trees and started planting them in neighborhoods. Today, Friends of Trees is a nationally recognized, regional leader in improving the urban tree canopy and restoring sensitive natural areas—through programs delivered by thousands of volunteers. Friends of Trees has planted more than 1 million trees and native plants in 120+ neighborhoods in six counties across two states in the 36 years since its founding.
Your voice is needed for more trees in Portland
We need your voice to help make sure that tree planting efforts in Portland are equitable, inclusive and community-driven.
You may have heard of the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF), approved by voters in November 2018. PCEF is intended to provide a consistent, long-term funding source to ensure that our community’s climate action efforts support social, economic and environmental benefits for all Portlanders, particularly communities of color and people with low incomes.
PCEF has dedicated $40 million for tree planting and tree care. The Equitable Tree Canopy Program will work in Portland’s most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods to equitably plant and establish 15,000 – 25,000 trees on public and private property.
Friends of Trees testified at City Council in support of this exciting initiative and continues to be engaged in the process, partaking in three roundtable conversations that helped inform the current draft of the Equitable Tree Canopy Program.
Right now, PCEF is looking for feedback on the working draft, which you can review here. Feedback is due by March 2, 2023 and can be made through emailing [email protected]. Friends of Trees needs your help to promote these points:
- Authentic community involvement in implementing the tree planting program. We recognize that the government, as the funding instrument, plays a role, but we know through 34 years of community tree planting that inclusive community engagement is key to ensuring buy-in and long-term success.
- Flexibility in funding language. This is a new endeavor with a lot of funds available and a very ambitious goal. It’s critical that the City and PCEF allow for language that is responsive to community needs as this program is implemented and evolves.
- Opt-in approaches for street AND yard tree planting. This means tree recipients proactively say Yes to a tree as a result of community based outreach and education. Friends of Trees knows that the opt-in method helps ensure that the trees that are planted survive and thrive because of the tree recipients’ buy-in.
- Include funding for planting yard trees. We all know the benefits that street trees provide, like shaded sidewalks and cooler neighborhoods. We also know that many folks don’t have planting strips where they can plant a street tree, but do have space for yard trees, and others really want fruit trees (which aren’t the best street trees). The more trees the better!
This is not only a historic funding opportunity, it’s a chance for the City to take giant strides toward authentic community engagement through a structure that entrusts community organizations to co-manage the tree planting funds. And we’re set up for success with a model like this: Friends of Trees and other community stakeholders such as Verde and the Jade Greening Project have successful track records with authentic community engagement, community tree planting, and collaborating to achieve common goals inclusively and equitably.
Public comment periods are your chance to have your voice heard. Join us in supporting funding for community tree planting for years to come!
Eugene’s Northwest Expressway Plantings
Two Decades of Planting along the Northwest Expressway
Every season, the Eugene Branch kicks off its planting season along the Northwest Expressway, a five-mile stretch of road parallel to the railroad. It’s not the most glamorous of planting sites, but there is plenty of available space for large trees to grow and provide their benefits to the community.
Friends of Trees volunteers will gather in Eugene on November 5th for Phase 9 of this planting project. The land is owned by Lane County and abuts the Union Pacific railyard. Friends of Trees picked this annual planting project up in 2013, but it actually started back around 2000, with what we now call Phase Zero, planted by the Eugene Tree Foundation (which became Friends of Trees – Eugene). That first planting has grown into sizable shade trees, and has served as the site of a condoned homeless camp for veterans in Eugene.
“Those trees are now providing shade to people,” says Eugene Director Erik Burke. “It goes to show that trees can still have benefits when they’re planted in places besides private property.”
For these Northwest Expressway plantings, the Eugene team is creating pods of plants. After removing a eight-foot diameter of grass, they’ll plant one-to-four trees and four-to-six shrubs. In addition, this year they’ve added camas bulbs to the recipe, and will also be adding native milkweed and Douglas’ aster.
Installing understory layers in addition to trees is an approach that the Eugene team hopes to expand on for all their plantings. This year, they’re offering camas bulbs as an add-on for neighborhood tree recipients.
“We really want to be creating habitat for native pollinators,” Erik says. “So we’ve got 900 camas bulbs to plant this season.”
This year at Northwest Expressway, they’ll plant 20 trees, 50 shrubs and 50 herbaceous plants along Northwest Expressway.
“We started planting at the southern end of the expressway, then moved to the north, and now we’re filling in the middle,” says Eugene-Springfield Program Manager Taylor Glass. “We’re required to space these pods out a bit, but that means we have plenty of space to plant trees that will grow to be quite big.”
The next time you’re driving on Northwest Expressway, keep your eye out for incense cedars, Pacific madrones, valley ponderosas, giant sequoias, and California laurels. What used to be an empty stretch of grass is on its way toward being a happy home for trees.
Clean Air Canopy
Trees for Clean Air in NE Portland
If you live in Sumner, Cully, Parkrose, Argay, or Wilkes, register here to get a free tree!
Of all the benefits that trees provide, clean air is one that entire communities benefit from. When the Owens-Brockway glass facility was found to be excessively polluting in the vicinity of several Northeast Portland communities and the Columbia Slough Watershed, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality fined the facility and granted funds to Friends of Trees and our partners to lead community tree plantings in the area.
Friends of Trees, in partnership with community members and organizations, will coordinate the planting of 5,000 native plants and trees over the course of the Clean Air Canopy project.
Of these, about 800 trees will be located along neighborhood streets and private properties in the Sumner, Cully, Parkrose, Argay, and Wilkes neighborhoods. 4,200 more native plants and trees will be planted in natural areas located across these neighborhoods and along the Columbia Slough watershed.
This project would not be possible without our partners: Verde, the Cully Air Action Team (CAAT), and the Cully Association of Neighbors. Verde and CAAT’s advocacy work held this polluter accountable and led to this project’s creation. These partners have been instrumental to our outreach efforts.
“This project really represents the breadth of what we do at Friends of Trees,” says Green Space Program Manager Michelle Yasutake. “Working in both neighborhoods and natural areas, connecting with community members, and providing a tangible benefit in the form of cleaner air.”
These new trees and native plants will improve air quality and the quality of life for residents of these NE Portland neighborhoods. Leaves from the trees planted in this project will not only intercept and store particulate matter from the air, they will provide shade and cooling benefits, lessen urban heat island effects, and improve habitat and stormwater management.
Friends of Trees is already working with community members to identify planting locations. Planting and caring for the trees together gives us a chance to talk with the community about the positive impacts of clean air, clean water, and healthy urban tree canopy in neighborhoods and nearby industrialized areas.
“We’re really excited for this opportunity to form connections with residents, and to work alongside them to understand their needs and bring trees to their community in a way that works best for them,” says Aliesje King, the Neighborhood Trees Program Manager at Friends of Trees.
If you live in Sumner, Cully, Parkrose, Argay, or Wilkes, reach out to us to get a free tree! Register here, or email us at [email protected] with any questions.
Wrapping Up A Successful Season in Eugene
What a year in Eugene-Springfield! Every event was full of eager smiles, familiar faces, and enthusiastic treecipients. “There’s nothing better than a fantastic day of planting with community members,” says Volunteer & Program Specialist Taylor Glass. “We had so many great events this year. It’s a great way to connect.”
Even while adapting to the pandemic, the Eugene Branch has done so much to grow their program and expand their impact, and we wanted to report to you some of this season’s results.
- Friends of Trees volunteers planted 524 trees at 12 events in Eugene and Springfield, and distributed 350 more at a tree give-away event.
- 475 total volunteers donated over 1,500 hours of their time to these efforts. We have seen firsthand how planting and caring for trees increases community members’ engagement with the environment and participation in civic life.
- We planted 86 different species of trees, many of which are climate resilient, to grow the diversity of our urban canopy.
The season saw so many highlights, like expanding the use of bicycles, planting trees at schools, and honoring the legacy of community leaders. We grew our relationship with the City of Springfield, an important geography for our equity work. This season’s work was all about being intentional.
“The pandemic, racial justice issues, and extreme heat of the last few years, have focused our urban tree planting work more on equity, sustainability, and resilience.” says Eugene Director Erik Burke.
This work couldn’t be done without our dedicated volunteers, partners, and sponsors. This summer, we will continue to work with volunteers on tree care and inspection, and we’ll be preparing for another incredible season come October!