TreeVitalize, Greenworks, and TreeTenders work to raise Philly's UTC from 11% to 30%; Philadelphia, PA

RoxReview.com: "Posted on Wed, May 20, 2009 Zoom + | Zoom -
It happens every spring"
Less than 24 hours later, Sue Harrison, chair of EFTT's Tree-Vitalize planting, was welcoming scores of Phila U students and other volunteers to East Falls Presbyterian Church. Working with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) Ms. Harrison orchestrated the largest tree planting project in East Falls: 80 trees in two days. The effort represented more than 900 volunteer hours of labor ranging from sorting, tagging, and loading trees to purchasing tools, mulch, and soil, to digging holes, pounding stakes, and watering trees. These trees, representing 22 species, traveled from hundreds of miles to Philadelphia, their bare roots protected by a gel solution. Once again the Philadelphia Water Department, ever eager to mitigate stormwater runoff by encouraging the planting of trees, collected the trees at Drexel University underground depot, stored them overnight, and then delivered them in time for planting. The 100 volunteers valiantly ignored the 90 degree plus temperatures as they toiled, block after block, to increase the local tree canopy. Since 1995 EFTT has coordinated the planting of 700 trees.
With TreeVitalize and the Mayor's new initiative, Greenworks, EFTT is looking forward to increasing its 11 percent tree canopy to 30 percent in the years ahead.