BHR NEWSLETTER

Spring 2008 Issue

Local Branches of the Urban Forest

By William Rodarmor

From the porch of her North Berkeley house, Stephanie Vollmer admires a pair of flowering cherry trees growing along the sidewalk along Capistrano Avenue. “They have gorgeous tissue-paper petals when they bloom,” she says. “They’re incredibly beautiful.” Vollmer paid for the two-year-old trees, but the City of Berkeley planted them. Parks and Rec workers removed a dying cherry tree from the curbside planting strip few years ago and put in the new ones. “They took care of everything,” says Vollmer, a marketing and advertising copywriter who moved to the East Bay from San Francisco four years ago. “They tethered the trees to steel stakes, packed mulch around them, and told us how to water them.” The city is responsible for pruning the trees, but they don’t need it yet. “All I have to do is water them,” says Vollmer, who drip-waters the trees for 15 to 30 minutes every three or four weeks.

About a mile further north, Patricia Murphy makes sure the two crepe myrtles growing in front of her Clayton Avenue house don’t get too dry. They were planted earlier this year, as part of El Cerrito’s Earth Day events. “El Cerrito has an extensive list of permitted trees,” says Murphy, “and we could check the size of a tree’s canopy and see how big its trunk would grow.” City employees and volunteers showed up on April 22 to plant the two trees. “Before that, we just had squares of dirt in the sidewalk that we had to keep weeding,” she says. The trees were free, but she and her husband must maintain them for the first year. “If they die, we’re responsible for replacing them,” says Murphy, who already had a pair of lavender crepe myrtles in her back yard. “Now we’re waiting to see what color they’ll be when they bloom.”

Trees: Virtues and Vices

Flowering cherry trees, crepe myrtles, beauty and shade—what could be wrong with this picture? Most people feel that trees greatly enhance the urban landscape. Among other things, they: reduce air pollution; beautify streets, homes, and parks; increase property values; buffer highway and transit noise; shelter birds and animals; prevent soil erosion and storm water runoff; moderate temperatures; stabilize slopes and hillsides; enhance the environment and views; reduce energy consumption; trap dust and pollen; and provide privacy.

But not everybody likes trees. Planting trees in the city turns out to be a lot more controversial than you might think, and I’m not referring to tree-sitters opposed to UC Berkeley’s athletic expansion plans.

“Some people don’t like leaves in their gutters, roots coming up, shade on their property, or branches over the fence line,” says Betsy Reeves, who is the City of Berkeley’s chief tree planter. The challenge for Reeves and her six field staffers is to educate people about the larger value of the trees. She must be succeeding, because Berkeley has an impressive urban forest. “We have some 45,000 trees, and we aim to plant 600 more every year,” she says. But the job can sometimes feel like an uphill battle.

“Trees have to coexist with the urban infrastructure, and conflicts inevitably arise,” says Reeves somberly. “The hardest part of my job is dealing with deliberate vandalism: people destroying young trees; snapping off branches; girdling the base of the tree when they use weed whips; and neglecting to weed and water them.”

Fortunately, Reeves’s job also has a significant upside. “I love the fact that we get to plant and care for trees,” she says. Her personal favorites include a Chinese pistachio tree at Ashby Place Park east of College Avenue and the ginkgo trees along the Shattuck Avenue median. “I also love the coast live oaks in John Hinkel Park,” she says.

Arboreal Albany

When Tony Wolcott became Albany’s first urban forester in late 2007, he’d already experienced the public’s love-hate relationship with trees. He also brought a big-city perspective to his new, small-town job. That’s because in addition to working for a national tree company, he was also the acting urban forester for the City of San Francisco.

“Albany has a critical mass of people interested in trees and the urban forest,” says Wolcott. “San Francisco does too, but it also has a large contingent of people who hate trees. We had constant battles over them.” Wolcott says he regularly appeared in “tree court,” the city’s Board of Appeals. “There were always big, dramatic performances,” he says. “It’s not such a big issue here in Albany, because nearly everybody here loves trees. We still have the odd character who feels that a certain tree should be cut down, but it’s pretty rare.”

Wolcott lists some of the reasons the locals give him for disliking trees: “They make a mess or cast too much shade. Drains get plugged by roots, and some trees are messy, he says. "The big issue, of course, is views.” Having a tree block your view of the sunset isn’t a problem in the flatlands, he says, but it can lead to heated arguments as you go higher into the hills.

Wolcott’s biggest problem so far in his tenure has involved determining who is responsible for a tree. This usually depends on where it is growing, and the issue usually arises when a tree on a fence between two pieces of private property grows too big. But it can also happen on the boundary between private and public spheres, and that can lead to legal problems.

“All trees will eventually lift sidewalks,” says Wolcott, “and that raises liability issues that affect both cities and property owners. If the sidewalk is the responsibility of the abutting property owner, who is responsible when tree roots crack the sidewalk, and someone slips and falls? The legal wrangling can be frustrating,” he says. “In our litigious ways, everybody gets sued, including the ice cream vendor.”

If a tree’s trunk is ‘emanating’—that's the legal term of art—entirely from the public right-of-way, it’s on public property, says Wolcott. “But if the trunk of a tree on private property grows so large that it goes over the line, it can become public.” That may sound odd, but it actually happened in Albany shortly before Wolcott started his job. After first checking with the city about his rights, a property owner cut down a large cypress tree. But as the tree was being removed, it was discovered that part of the trunk had emanated from the public right-of-way. “The tree’s legal status actually changed as it grew,” says Wolcott.

Finding Your Roots

If you’re an East Bay property owner and you’d like to have a tree in front of your property, you can usually get one. Prices and procedures vary, but Albany’s approach is pretty typical. You fill out an application, choose a tree from a list of approved species, and pay a fee, currently $100 per tree. (To get ideas, consult Berkeley’s Illustrated Guide to the Street Tree Planting Program at a local library.) Says Wolcott: “We provide the tree and plant it, and give you some instructions regarding weeding, mulching, and watering.” If necessary, the city will also cut a planting basin in the sidewalk, for an additional fee.

Because they’re planted on the public right-of-way, the new trees don’t belong to the property owners. “We have maintenance responsibility for them,” says Wolcott. “We prune the trees and in emergencies will cut branches off, but the property owner needs to care for the trees when they’re young.”

Following the lead of San Francisco’s Friends of the Urban Forest, Wolcott is urging Albany residents to organize neighborhood tree plantings. “If we get ten or more trees on a block, we’ll remove the concrete for free and cut the cost of each tree to $50,” he says. Green-thumb volunteers typically gather on a Saturday, and may plant 20 trees at a time. “We’ve done about five block plantings so far, and I’m trying to encourage them.” The main obstacle to tree planting is plain old human inertia, but once it’s done, most people are thrilled by the results.

When Stephanie Vollmer’s flowering cherry trees went in two years ago, they sparked something of a green rush along Capistrano Avenue. “A neighbor up the street put in a tree, and then my neighbors across the street planted a bunch of gorgeous plum trees,” she says. (They didn’t realize they were supposed to get permission first, but the City of Berkeley decided it was okay.) “Having trees on the street really softens the energy of the city,” says Vollmer. “It takes the hard urban edge of concrete and asphalt completely away.”

East Bay Tree-Planting Information

For information about tree-planting programs, contact these agencies.

Albany — 510-559-4275 or visit Albany Urban Forestry.

Berkeley — 510-981-6700 or visit Berkeley Urban Forestry Management Program.

El Cerrito — 510-215-4300 or visit El Cerrito Tree Planting.

Kensington — Contra Costa County: 925-335-1381 or 925-313-2000

Oakland — 510-615-5850 or visit Oakland Public Works: Tree Section.

Richmond — 510-231-3004 or visit Richmond Parks and Landscaping.