Tag: partnership
Creating Long-Term Impact in Eugene
Northwest Youth Corps crews have worked to protect our natural area plantings for the future.
This fall, the Eugene Branch hosted three crews from Northwest Youth Corps, which provides hands-on education and job training in conservation fields to youth and young adults. The crews spent much of their time at our Green Space planting sites making sure the work done to enhance these natural areas continues to have an impact well into the future.
“They’ve done such great work for us and for the City of Eugene,” Eugene Director Erik Burke says. “We really want to show native plant restoration work that looks healthy and cared for so that we can inspire people to plant that way at their homes.”
The work involved weeding and mulching at the planting sites along Northwest Expressway in Eugene, Bob Straub Parkway in Springfield, and in the Bethel neighborhood near Danebo Pond in West Eugene. This work protects the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants from grass competition and mowers. It also protects pollinator habitat and bridges gaps for wildlife alongside major arterials.
“The members had the opportunity to work alongside great staff who took the time to educate our folks and explain the why behind the work,” says Will Wildebrandt, Urban Community Forestry Program Coordinator for Northwest Youth Corps. “They enjoyed being able to see a visible difference. It feels good to walk away from newly created tree mulch rings knowing they will be crucial in helping those trees grow and reach their full potential.”
The NYC members also had a chance to do neighborhood outreach, connecting with community members about the benefits of trees and green spaces in their neighborhoods.
“In our Urban Community Forestry program, we really care about making people feel more connected to the city they live in,” Will says, “and this project is a great way to build connections with neighbors while sharing the work we are doing with the community.”
“All the youth corps members were excited about the work,” says Taylor Glass, Eugene-Springfield Program Manager. “They were really into trees and could tell that the work was part of something bigger.”
The Eugene team has loved working with the Northwest Youth Corps crews, who have accomplished work that otherwise didn’t have funding. For everyone involved, it shows the power of partnerships to create a lasting impact.
“The work gives the city a better chance to expand its green space while giving our members the opportunity to know that the work they are doing is benefiting an entire community and truly matters,” Will says. “This can be very empowering.”
March (Planting) Madness in Eugene
Our Eugene Team partnered with University of Oregon for a natural area planting project
This March, there was a truly exciting University of Oregon event—a natural area planting! No one loses when more than 50 students show up to plant in the riparian zone of the Willamette River.
“U of O has a huge presence here in Eugene,” says Eugene Director Erik Burke, “so it was great to be able to partner with them on this really cool project.”
The university owns a lot of land along the Willamette River, which presents a great opportunity to restore and expand the riparian forest along it. Riparian zones are the areas alongside a waterway where land and water interact. Riparian plants are critical to the health of a waterway as they prevent erosion, help break down pollutants from the water, and provide habitat for aquatic wildlife.
Students from environmental science, landscape architecture and other programs planted natives like red-flowering currant, twinberry and tall Oregon grape. They even transitioned from riparian forest to savannah, planting trees like ponderosa pine and Oregon white oak alongside wildflowers. This stretch of riparian forest grew from 30 feet wide to 50 feet wide in a single planting event.
“There’s not a lot of riparian forest left along the Willamette,” Erik says. “It’s really valuable to be able to make improvements to what we do have. We’re grateful to U of O for bringing this opportunity to us.”
We have plans to do three more of these natural area plantings with the University of Oregon in the next two years, giving these student volunteers more opportunity to make a positive impact on the Willamette River. Sounds like a slam dunk to us.
Partner Spotlight: POIC
POIC is part of the 11-member coalition for our IRA Community Forestry Grant
On a sunny Saturday morning at Gateway Green Park, volunteers gathered to plant native plants on the wooded hillside of the park. Many of the volunteer crews were led by quiet but capable young folks from POIC.
Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC) connects high school youth with career training, including partnering with Friends of Trees. POIC students train as crew leaders and lead Friends of Trees plantings throughout the season. Gateway Green was this cohort’s fifth event overall this season, and second as crew leaders.
“This season is going great,” says Leigh Rappaport, Program Manager for POIC’s Natural Resource Pathway. “They’re a really committed group. They care about what they’re doing and are thoughtful about making sure volunteers are having a good time.”
POIC is part of the 11-member coalition led by Friends of Trees that was awarded a $12 million Urban and Community Forestry Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the Inflation Reduction Act grants. The grant will fund community forestry work including tree planting, natural area restoration, post-planting care, community education, opportunities for direct community input and participation, and workforce training.
Part of the grant will help fund POIC’s natural resource training for five years. “Having this funding gives us room to breathe” Leigh says. “We can really focus on the program.”
Beyond that, Leigh looks forward to all of the partnerships that will grow out of this expansive and collaborative project.
“We’re excited to be part of a coalition being built from the ground up.”
The Eugene Branch’s Greenpower Grant
Expanding Equity and Sustainability Work with an EWEB Greenpower Grant
Eugene residents can support tree planting through Eugene Water and Electric Board’s Greenpower program. Residents can volunteer to donate one cent per kilowatt-hour toward funding environmental projects.
Friends of Trees is grateful to be a recipient of a Greenpower grant, which includes $50,000 over two years to plant trees in low income, high diversity neighborhoods that also have low canopy and high heat. As part of the effort to increase tree equity in Eugene, the trees are provided to residents for free through this program. We then engage treecipients in tree stewardship beyond the planting to ensure that the trees can have a sustained impact on their neighborhood.
“For just a penny for every kilowatt-hour, Eugene residents can help make their communities more sustainable,” said Cheryl Froehlich from EWEB to volunteers as she thanked them at the Friends of Trees’ Mangan Park planting event last month.
As part of this Greenpower grant funded work, Friends of Trees formed a productive partnership with members of the neighborhood association Active Bethel Community (ABC), City of Eugene, and local businesses.
When the neighborhood expressed interest in more street, yard, and park trees, we offered free street and yard trees to all neighborhood residents, and used equity mapping applications to choose two focus areas around neighborhood parks to do extra work. There, ABC residents went door to door to each house with a public planting space and talked to residents. Friends of Trees staff helped with site selection, questions and sign ups.
With funding from the Greenpower grant, the capstone of this year’s Friends of Trees work was putting on two planting events in West Eugene, in the Bethel neighborhoods around Gilbert Park and Mangan Park. To honor the mission of the grant and meet our own goals of increasing the sustainability of our events, we incorporated more bicycle crews. Both plantings had four bike crews and two carpool crews. We towed the gear and trees on bike trailers, and the volunteer planters either biked or walked from house to house.
Friends of Trees also hosted multiple free tree walks in each focus area park, and completed several additional smaller neighborhood plantings, tree walks, and community outreach events.
The City of Eugene made major contributions to the canopy in the same neighborhoods, with plantings in the focus area parks, pruning work in the neighborhood, and a major series of planting events on Highway 99, one of the main heat islands in Eugene.
“The pandemic, racial justice issues, and extreme heat of the last few years, have focused our urban tree planting work more intentionally on equity, sustainability, and resilience.” says Eugene Director Erik Burke. “The Greenpower grant has allowed us to expand this work.”
We are excited to use Greenpower grant funding to grow and improve our work in Bethel and expand the approach to Trainsong neighborhood for next planting season.