Tree planting in Columbus took a hit a few months back due to federal funding cuts.
The city has lost some grant reimbursement money for trees that officials had been planning on.
Tree planting may be a part of city planning that you might not think about very much, but Columbus has set many tree planting goals over the years.
Regardless of the financial obstacles, volunteers, nonprofits, residents and city partners are working to make sure the city reaches its tree canopy goals.
Guest:
- Shelly Douglas, executive director, Green Columbus
Support WOSU 89.7 NPR News during our spring membership drive and you can receive a Native Tree that will be purchased by WOSU on your behalf of your donation and planted by Green Columbus as a thank you gift.
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. This is our membership drive, more about that in just a moment. Tree planting in Columbus took a hit a few months back due to federal funding cuts. The city has lost some grant reimbursement money for trees that they had been planning on planting.
Tree planting may be a part of city planning that you might not think about very much, but Columbus has set many tree planting goals over the years. Regardless of the financial obstacles, volunteers, nonprofits, residents, and city partners are working to make sure the city reaches its tree canopy goals.
And joining us to talk about tree planting just ahead of Earth Day, we have the executive director of Green Columbus, Shelley Douglas. Welcome back to the show, Shelley.
Shelley Douglas: Hi, Amy, thanks so much for having me back.
Juravich: Well, let's start with that term I just used, tree canopy. Tell us what a tree canopy is.
Douglas: Yeah, so the tree canopy is basically just the surface area shaded by trees. So if you think about the top, the leafy part of a tree, the shade that that gives off is our tree canopy. And so we have a tree canopy coverage of 22%. Here in central Ohio, 22% of our ground is shaded by tree. It should be 40.
Juravich: I was just going to say, is that?
Douglas: Is that good, 22%? That is not good. That is, not only not good in terms of American forests goal of 40%, it's also not good compared to other cities similarly sized to Columbus. So we have a goal to get to that 40% tree canopy by 2050.
Juravich: Yeah, that was my next question. Do other cities do a better job with the tree canopy? Did they just like not cut down as many trees or do they plant more trees than us?
Douglas: Yeah, a lot of cities have more robust planting plans, but also the development and kind of the speed at which Columbus has grown has contributed to a lot trees being removed. So it's kind of a combination of both.
We need to speed up our planting and also we need to be more mindful when we are developing about leaving space for trees. Cause some of our yards and things like that don't even have enough room to plant a tree.
Juravich: So the goal of Green Columbus is to grow an equitable tree canopy. What does that look like? How many trees are we talking to get from 22% to 40?
Douglas: Yeah, so it's a lot of trees. And so the city of Columbus plants what we call street trees. So those are along our right of way. Those are what you see between the sidewalk and the street. Green Columbus is trying to plant trees everywhere else besides that.
So we need more trees in places like our schools, our churches, our... Apartment complexes, our YMCAs, places where people visit day to day. And so we are trying to put these trees, not just anywhere, but strategically place them in the communities that have the least amount of trees.
And those communities often overlap with our low income communities, our communities of color, and just places experiencing other risk factors, which is where that tree equity term comes from and equitable tree canopy coverage. So we don't just want. You know, 50% tree canopy in Worthington.
And in Bexley, we want trees equally and equitably distributed. Some of our communities have as low as 8% tree canopies. So that 22% is an average. So some are lower, some are higher. I live in Clintonville. I read Clintonville's doing pretty well with its tree canopy.
Juravich: Yes, Clintonville loves their trees, but even Clintonville needs more trees because trees do age out eventually. And so as our our tree canopy gets older, we'll have to start kind of replacing those trees But we're not we're as concerned about Clintonville right now as other communities. Well, we're
You're listening to All Sides, we are talking this hour about increasing the tree canopy. We are taking about the equitable tree canopy, and we have a great opportunity for you, our listeners. This is our membership drive. Support the station right now. This hour, we're focusing on a simple way to make a lasting impact.
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Remember that listeners across our community are stepping up to support public radio. We ask you to join them. You will be able to help improve Columbus's tree canopy for future generations. You'll be able spread the message of conservation. This idea of public radio with tree planting just goes hand in hand.
Support public radio and plant trees at the same time through this great partnership between WOSU and Green Columbus. Join us now at wosu.org or give us a call 866-897-9678. Shelly, when Green Columbus does a tree planting project, what type of trees do you plant and do you always try to pick a native tree?
Douglas: Yeah, so Green Columbus is in the business of native trees. Native trees are more disease and drought tolerant, so they're kind of meant to live and thrive here. And they also have more benefits to wildlife. But we're planting large canopy shade trees.
So we're looking for kind of the biggest bang for our buck. We're a non-profit, so we're trying to have the biggest impact we can. But that being said, we follow right tree, right place. So. The type of tree that we're planting is heavily dependent on the type of property that we are planting.
For example, when we are planting trees at schools, we've planted over 650 trees at Columbus City Schools. We're planting really big, 10 foot tall, couldn't pick it up yourself trees so that the kids can't go out and recess and pull them out of the ground.
They have to be sturdy. But when we're planting somewhere along the river or in a restoration area where we need a lot of trees at once, we're plant seedling trees that are 12 to 24 inches. And so even though they're all native trees, they kind of have a different purpose based on the actual tree size that it is when you plant it.
Juravich: Give me an example of, are we talking like an oak tree? I don't, like, tell me the names of some trees you plant.
Douglas: Yeah, absolutely oak trees. Oak trees are kind of what we consider the powerhouse native tree. They can be a host species to over 500 species of like birds, butterflies, moths, things like that. But also.
Juravich: But also, we like oak trees, all right. We love oak trees. Got it.
Douglas: But they also give off a lot of shade, which helps combat that extreme heat. Rates of asthma go down when you have big trees like that. But at our tree nursery in South Linden, we grow red oaks, we grow sycamores, we do black cherry, we do red maple.
Some other native trees that you've probably heard of are the tulip poplar, the Ohio buckeye. There are smaller species of native trees, like the red bud. Just not the calorie pear the invasive calorie pear tree. Yeah
Juravich: Yeah, we will we will get to that. Oh, the poor the poor pear trees. Oh my goodness, but we will get to That in a minute. So but tell me about why you're picking native trees. I mean, obviously, well, I guess we could talk about the pear because that's invasive. And now there's way too many of them, right. So when you go with a native tree, what's the benefits?
Douglas: Yeah, so all trees are going to absorb CO2 and release oxygen, right? So that's kind of a given. The native trees, one, we are a non-profit, so we want these trees to live for as long as possible and provide benefit to as many generations as possible. And so it's more likely that they will live and thrive. Little hardier. Yeah, they're.
They're heartier and they kind of know the diseases and the things that the pests that are native to our area, they can stand up to them a little better. But also, Green Columbus is really kind of people focused.
It's sustainability focused on our health and our community, but the true environmentalists and conservation people will tell you that we need native trees in order to support. Our pollinators, which in turn gives us food. And so our pollinator are at a 40% decline globally.
And so anything we can do to sneak in these native trees to provide a more holistic habitat for our pollonators is also going to help us in the longterm. And we also want to plant things that are native because if it's not native, and we plant it here, it has the opportunity to become invasive, and invasive plants actually prevent our native species from growing, and they don't serve anything.
They could produce air for us, but nothing knows how to eat it, or live in it, or utilize it, and it has opportunity to actually become dangerous to us and our health.
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Thank you to Teresa Sedlock from Columbus for kickstarting this hour. We appreciate your support. So for our membership drive today, I'm talking about these trees. We're talking about the smaller trees. You call them seedlings, right? So tell me about these little baby trees.
Douglas: Yeah, they have all kinds of names. People call them seedlings, some people call them whips, some people them saplings, but these are- Whips I've never heard of, but okay. That's yeah, kind of like I think the art, or the professional term for what they call them, but so these are anywhere from 12 to 24 inches bare root, so they're not planted in any soil or medium.
Of any sort, they're just bare root and they kind of just look like sticks because a lot of times they don't have leaves on them yet or they're dormant. And so we purchased these trees during Earth month which is right now in April because we can buy a lot of them because they're cheaper, because they are smaller.
And so this month in April, we're actually purchasing and distributing 50,000 of these native seedling trees. And so these are ideal for restoration projects, for reforestation, for places where they need to plant a lot of trees at once.
And so you can get maybe 500 trees in the ground with 50 volunteers. And maybe not every single one of those will make it because they are susceptible to deer. The deer like to eat our native trees. And we do have times of drought and things like that, but that's why you plant so many of them.
And so there are 40 to 50 people coming to pick up trees this month to take out to different sites across central Ohio and do this reforestation work.
Juravich: I have to imagine if you are dealing with 50,000 trees that you use a lot of volunteers, right? Because you're not handling 50,00 trees all by yourself. So tell me about some volunteer opportunities so our listeners can learn more about Green Columbus, maybe help plant some trees. Tell me about volunteering and tree planting.
Douglas: Yes, yes, volunteers are very important to us. Volunteer engagement is really one of our pillars. We are a very small team. We're a team of two at Green Columbus. Oh, man. So everything that we do outside of us two is volunteer-driven.
During April Earth Month, we have 5,000 volunteers across central Ohio out doing this work. It's the largest volunteer- driven event for Earth Day in the country. So there are more volunteers here in Columbus doing work for Earth Day than anywhere else. Really.
Juravich: Wow, that's really impressive. Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know that, yeah.
Douglas: And so I was kind of like, says who? Good job, Columbus. Yeah, yeah, I was like, says who, says Earthday.org. Oh. They confirmed that with us that the only other state that would rival us is Hawaii, but that's across all the islands.
So I was, like, well, we're not gonna count that. Columbus cares about Earth Day a lot. And so these projects are happening right now all throughout the rest of this month. Our main website is greenseabus.org. That's where you can find us all year.
But if you go to our Earth Day tab on the website, there's a map of all the events that are happening that are looking for volunteers to help plant trees. Of those 50,000 trees, I might plant 100 of them, me, myself.
All the rest of the work is done by volunteers and last Earth month. Since we're not done yet this year. Last Earth month, our volunteers did 22,000 hours of volunteer service, which would take me 10 and a half years with no vacations to do that amount of work in one month.
Juravich: Well, good job, Columbus, but yes, but I'm sure you could even use more. Right. Oh, absolutely. So you keep calling it earth month. Like earth day is April 22nd. Um, right. And so that's a day that like one day, but, um, tell me about why we're calling it Earth month.
Douglas: Yeah, so we have expanded beyond the bounds of Earth Day and we now need Earth Month. And we'll actually have hats at our Earth Day celebration this year, which is it's Sunday, April 26th at Scioto Audubon Metro Park. We're gonna have hats that say Earth Day every day.
So we're kind of, Earth Day is gonna take over eventually, but we do a month long service campaign for Earth Month every year. And so Green Columbus was founded in 2007 because they wanted to do something on Earth Day and so they gathered a thousand volunteers and they did a morning of service and then they had a picnic and had a celebration.
So now we have a month of service, tree plantings, litter cleanups, community garden work days, not just trees. And then we have big celebration at Scioto Audubon Metro Park, but we just have more and more and interest.
There's over 150. Events submitted by the community every year. So not just Green Columbus. These are other nonprofits, civic associations, businesses who are stepping up to host an event in their community.
Juravich: Is April a good month for planting trees? Do they make it? Like, I wouldn't, I guess, planting a tree in July, you'd have to water it, right, so.
Douglas: Correct, yeah, the best time to plant a tree is during our rainy season, so our spring and fall. It is getting a little hotter here in late fall and we've had some drought period the past couple years right at the end of the summer into the fall.
So those seasons are changing a little bit, but in general, yes, April is a great time to plant trees. But you do want to make sure that the trees stay watered throughout the summer season.
Actually the fall is an even better time to plant a tree because it has the fall rainy season, then the winter, and then the spring rainy season before the summer. So we have to make that there's some watering devices on trees that we plant and that we plan for that.
Juravich: Alright, we'll talk more about watering devices in a moment, but this is All Sides. This is our membership drive on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the need for more trees in Columbus, and we're talking about tree planting efforts with the executive director of Green Columbus, Shelley Douglas.
I want to say thank you to Joseph Finney from Columbus. Thank you for your gift of support. Joseph writes, I love NPR. I listen every day at work and it helps me get through the day. Thank you. For your gift. We also heard from Bill Rabinowitz who writes I love WOSU. Thank you, Bill.
Bill writes that he wants to donate on behalf of his grandson Atlas, and he wants to plant trees in Atlas's name. So thank you, Bill, for that gift of support. Bill Rabinowitz might be related to All Sides producer Aaron Esma Rabinowicz, I believe.
And so we're going to plant some trees on little Atlas's behalf. And you can join us right now. This is a great time to become a member of 89.7 NPR News, because not only are you supporting public radio, But, for this hour, we are highlighting a special offer.
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Shelly, let's talk more about that watering. So you said that if you know the tree is gonna need some help, you can add a watering device. What is that?
Douglas: Yeah, so there are all kinds of different watering devices, but what Green Columbus is using specifically, I mentioned we have two team members, so we've planted thousands of trees across central Ohio. We cannot go out there with like a bucket of water for all of these trees every day.
When we plant trees at places like Columbus City Schools, we're not just planting the tree, we're putting It's actually called a tree diaper, which is a really funny name, but it has kind of the same material in it as a diaper, so it absorbs rainwater and then it releases it over time.
So we don't have to go back out and refill. As long as it rains, I think it's like every 30 days. If it goes longer than 30 days without rain, that's when you have to do some supplemental watering.
But these go under the mulch, and so they actually are filling up when it rains and releasing water slowly. And we have used these at all of the schools we've planted. They're actually reusable too.
So we can take them off and use them again. The city of Columbus is starting to use these on some of their trees and it really increases the survivability. We have over 95% survivability of the trees we've planted at Columbus City Schools with these devices.
And we're actually going in and talking with the students as well. To let them know why these trees were planted. These trees are for you and your health and your community. Help us take care of them.
Don't rip the water bags off of them, don't mess with the stakes, don't break the branches off. So we have kind of a plan to protect and maintain the trees after we plant them as well.
Juravich: Your website says Green Columbus has planted more than 300,000 trees since 2007. How much of a dent would that make in the tree canopy we were talking about earlier? So does that take us from 22% to 23% or not even that?
Douglas: Yeah, it is hard to calculate because while we know where those trees are planted, we're planting sometimes thousands of trees at a site where we won't necessarily have an exact survivability number after 10 years, but there is a tool that we can use.
It's called treeequityscore.org and you can actually do a scenario where you say, hey, I planted a hundred large canopy trees. And it'll tell you what that did to the tree canopy and tell you the benefits over time.
And so the city of Columbus has identified like 96,000 planting spots for street trees, but they're planting larger size trees, so that's gonna take a really long time. They're actually only planting, when you consider removals, only about 2,000 trees a year.
And so we need to be like at least doubling, probably tripling that number in order to get to that 40% tree canopy by 2050. But yeah, we are. Who set that date? You? The city of Columbus. So the city of Columbia has a, it's called the "Urban Forestry Master Plan."
And so they came up with this whole plan to fix the tree canopy. The catch is that it's just a plan, right? Somebody's got to do the work. The city of Columbus is planting street trees, but what they're not planting are other community spaces.
Right now, not even like our parks and our rec centers are planted. There's a hundred year old parks and rec centers that have very little trees. We just got the Dodge Community Center planted, which is a big win.
But so we're trying to advocate, like we've planted schools, but we're tying to advocate for. More of those trees to go into the places where, you know, those are our emergency centers, if there was, we call those our resiliency hubs, right?
If there's a heat wave or a power outage like we had when it was 100 plus degrees, those are places where people go to gather and there's no trees and there is no shade for people to wait for their resources.
Juravich: Well, there was a big $1.9 billion capital bond package that was passed last November for the city and it did have some money in it for trees. I believe if it stayed the same, it was about 450,000 for street trees. Is that enough? Is that good? It's not enough, I don't know.
Douglas: I don't know. Well, it's better than nothing, right? We're excited to see trees in there. However, it is just that, it street trees. So that's still not, I think that people aren't really aware that the "Urban Forestry Master Plan" was really only focusing on those street trees and not their parks, their schools, their rec centers, their community spaces.
And so Green Columbus does a lot of advocacy with city council. With the mayor's office. We've been having conversations just to see how we can shake out more. And we're not, we know that it's hard to just give us a, you know, a blank check for trees, but where can we build in funding for trees and other projects like
Juravich: So if you're gonna renovate a rec center or build a new one, include money in the budget for trees.
Douglas: Right, yeah, include money in the budget for trees and make sure you leave space in the plan for trees. We have our zoning codes being updated for the first time in 75 years right now.
And there's very little in that zoning code language about trees and requirements for tree plantings on property and mixed use development, which is what they're aiming for. And our zoning code actually proves to have less trees than parking lots, statistically.
So we're really encouraging, you know, not only the funding, but the thought to go in. We have this "Urban Forestry Master Plan," is somebody at the city, you now, making sure that that's being implemented with the other development plans going on.
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Juravich: Shelly, I wanted to ask you, because whenever you were talking about the need for trees at rec centers and schools and that kind of thing, I can't tell you how many playgrounds I've been on where the sun is just like beating down on me, my kids playing, I'm just standing there sweating and there's no tree to stand under, right? And I can like picture as the sun rises and sets and I'm like, I wish there was a tree right there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Juravich: Like, do you take that into consideration when you go, do you stand there and you're like, where makes sense for the trees?
Douglas: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So we are strategically placing trees to shade the areas that people are using. So when we go to plant the schools, we have permission to plant the school, but we're going to walk the grounds with the principal.
We're going walk the ground with the sports coaches, with the custodians to find out how they use that space. We don't want to accidentally plant a tree in the middle of somebody's pickup soccer field.
We've had actually instances where they want us to plant the trees a distance apart so that they can use them as makeshift soccer goals or they have a playground that's blacktop and just absolutely miserable to stand on if it's warm at all and that's creating kind of this heat bubble.
And so we're planting around parking lots, playgrounds, bus stops, sidewalks, places that. People are using and not just, you know, planting them all out in a field away from everything.
Juravich: Okay, and so I know it takes a while. You have to be patient to grow a tree to actually have the shade, right? So this is, you plant them now and my grandchildren will have a shaded park. Is that kind of like, how long does it take to get a tree big enough to produce real shade?
Douglas: Yeah, it depends. So the trees that we're planting at schools are already 10 plus feet tall. So they kind of do give an immediate visual impact.
We have planted some schools April, 2023, and I live right by Livingston Elementary is the school and I lived right by it. And when I drive by during the school day, there are kids sitting under the trees eating their lunches.
So they, kind of immediately. Provide some impact, but the trees that we're planting as seedlings actually will outpace those larger trees eventually, because they don't get that transplant shock of digging it up, moving it, putting it on a truck, planting it, but they don't have that immediate impact, right?
It's gonna take a few decades for that tree to provide enough shade, but we plant, in our tree nursery, we plant those. Seedlings that we were talking about the 12 to 24 inch and we plant those in March and by our tree giveaways in October They are you know, five six seven eight feet tall Okay, I'm like a real tree
And so that's part of the reason we plant native trees is because they're fast growing too Yeah, so the hope is that you know our our children and our grandchildren will will live to see the benefits of Of those shade trees that we're planting now
Juravich: We're going to get the trees for the next generation of moms standing in a park so they can stand under a shade tree instead. I want to say thank you to Katherine Lewis from Columbus and also Galen Bach from Washington Courthouse. Thank you for your gifts of support.
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So you go to our website, you select the tree planting thank you gift. You pick either a one-time gift or to give monthly, and then you just increase the quantity to the amount you wanna give.
Donate $5 and plant one tree. $10 and you can select two trees. Donate 50 dollars and select 10 trees and so on. Give now at wosu.org. I saw on your website that through your group, you can volunteer and help plant trees, but you can also request trees.
So tell me about that. Like on your web site, it says request trees, what does that mean? What are we requesting trees for?
Douglas: Yeah, so Green Columbus is primarily grant-funded, non-profit, so while we do receive donations and kind of other income, we're primarily going out and applying for grants to plant trees, and so usually they want to know, you know, where are you planting trees, why, what kind, And so I'm always out looking for places that are in need of trees.
And that we would be able to get permission to apply for a grant for, and I am one person. So I cannot be everywhere all the time, but people know their community best, and they probably walk or drive by a school or a park or a place every day that they're just like, man, I wish there were some more trees in that park or in that school.
And Green Columbus might be able to have a little bit more push or a little more credibility. With whatever, if it's the city of Columbus or if it is a business owner or the schools, we might be able to get through, whereas an individual or resident calling up might fall through the cracks or might not be listened to.
So we're trying to collect all of these requests for where people think there should be more trees so that we have this wish list when there is an opportunity for funding or when we do. Have the ability to plant trees. It's not me, a single person going out and being like, okay, we're gonna plant here.
It's the community letting us know where they want trees. It's us using that "Urban Forestry Master Plan" to see which communities have the most need, which ones are suffering from high rates of asthma and extreme heat the most. And then kind of combining those to prioritize where we're planting.
We have a limited amount of resources, so we want to go where is most needed first and then make our way through it. So it's not a guarantee that trees will show up when you request it, but it will be added to our wish list and we'll start chipping away at them as we have funding.
Juravich: Well, and you mentioned the city's urban forest mastery, "Urban Forestry Master Plan," and it has some ambitious goals. I listed, I looked up a few of the goals. One of them is to stop net canopy loss by 2030. What does that mean? How do we stop?
Douglas: So essentially that means they want to get to a place where they are planting more trees than they are removing. So with development and population growth, we need more room for people. Trees are gonna have to be removed, but the goal is that we are planting more trees then there are being removed.
And so the city does have a public tree code. So if trees are removed on public property, there has to be some sort of mitigation, they either have to pay or they have to replant. That doesn't exist on private property.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Douglas: And so there's no guarantee that trees will be replaced or mitigated at all if it's a developer coming in and clearing their private land. And so that is really the challenge there, even if the city isn't removing more trees than they're planting, other entities around are.
And a lot of utility companies remove trees for maintenance of their lines. And so right now there are far more trees being removed than there are being planted. And so we've actually stayed at that 22% canopy for over a decade without really moving it up much.
Juravich: Okay, so whenever the the utility companies come through and they kind of hack at the trees in the beautiful way that they do to get them away from the power lines, does that do you count that toward like lessening the tree canopy because the tree got like halfed basically.
Douglas: Yeah, and they actually, a lot of times now will remove the tree instead of pruning the branches because they know it will cost them again in the future. Five years from now, they have to do it again.
Yeah, so it's actually cheaper for them to just cut the tree down and not have to go back out and do that maintenance. Now, they can't do that on public property. They do have to pay in, and the city of Columbus is offering it's called the "Tree Assistance Program."
You can apply to plant trees on private property and they're using money from things like that when people have to pay in to replace those trees to make sure that the trees go back into the community they were removed from.
But yeah, there's no protection for trees on public property. And besides Green Columbus, there's a few other nonprofits who are planting trees on a private property. But that's really why our tree giveaway component is really important because nobody else can plant a tree in your yard besides you.
And so if a tree gets removed in your garden from maintenance or utilities, you can come to Green Columbus and get a free native tree to replace it.
You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I want to say thank you to Aaron McIntyre from Columbus. Hi, Aaron, thanks for your gift. And she writes, my son will be going to college for environmental science next year.
What a wonderful way to support WOSU and our environment. That sounds perfect, Aaron. Thank you so much for your gifts. You can join Aaron right now. This hour we are highlighting how your support can take root locally.
With any donation, WOSU will plant a native tree in your honor. And each $5 you add adds another tree. Make your contribution now and plant the future. The more you give, the more trees that are planted and the better your support of public radio, give now at wosu.org.
And select tree planting as your thank you gift when you go to the website and then increase the quantity of the number of trees you'd like to plant. A gift of $5 to WOSU is one tree. A gift of $25 is 5 trees and a gift of 50 dollars to WOSU is 10 trees and so on.
This is a great time to support public radio and help improve Columbus and its tree canopy for future generations. Give now at wosu.org. Before we run out of time, I wanted to ask you more about the Bradford pear tree in Columbus.
There's the invasive species that make themselves known every spring. Um, but if we remove them... And then we're lessening our tree canopy, right? So where's the give and take there with these Bradford pear trees?
Douglas: Yeah, so it is recommended to remove invasive trees, mainly because even though they pop up quickly, they are gonna prevent the native species that we need from growing. And so the ideal scenario is that you remove the invasive trees and then you immediately replant a native tree.
And so. Our effort on that is we do work with some companies who they offer a discount on removing invasive trees and then they plug our free tree giveaways.
So it's like, we know it's sad to lose any tree but you can get an even better tree for free from Green Columbus and so it's really important that we get rid of as many, and it's not just the Bradford Parrots, things like invasive bush honeysuckle.
It's just preventing our native species from growing up where they would normally distribute from the acorns and the helicopters from the maples and things like that, but they're not because the invasive trees are blocking their.
Juravich: Also, I was talking with a gardener, Deb Knappke, in a different show and we were talking about "Tree of Heaven" because the Spotted Lanternfly loves it so much, that's another bad one, Get rid of the "Tree of Heaven."
Douglas: Yes, get rid of the "Tree of Heaven" while it is small and you can pull it out of the ground because they are very hard. Even if you cut it down, it'll start shooting out little branches. It'll try to come back. And now with the Spotted Lanternfly, it's even more important to get rid of their food source. But they also just smell really bad.
You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. This is our membership drive and we're talking about the need for more trees in Columbus and we are talking about tree planting efforts with executive director of Green Columbus Shelly Douglas.
And we would love to hear from about 10 more people before the hour ends. We have 12 minutes remaining in the hour. You can be one of those people who makes a big impact right now. This hour, our focus is simple. It's a simple way to give and it makes a lasting impact.
When you become a member at any amount, a native tree will be planted on your behalf by Green Columbus. Add more trees in $5 increments. So one tree for every $5 you give. Make your contribution now and have trees planted on your behalf.
The more you give, the more trees are planted, and the more you are showing your support for public radio as well. All you have to do is go to wosu.org and select the native tree planting thank you gift.
And then increase the quantity to the amount of trees you want to help plant. $5 for one tree. Five trees for $25, 10 trees for 50 dollars, and so on. It is completely up to you.
And this is a great way to support WOSU. We are asking you to join us and step up and help improve Columbus's tree canopy for future generations. Support public radio and plant trees. This is a partnership and a great time to join.
Give at wosu.org or call 866-897-9678. So, you mentioned earlier, you're always looking for more. Volunteers to help plant all these trees, you need more people, more hands, what other events do you have coming up besides specifically Earth Day and Earth Month that you want to talk about?
Douglas: Yeah, so we are busiest during April for sure, but we are around all year. We have our tree nursery, it's in South Linden. It is almost totally volunteer run and so we have 3,000 trees growing out there right now and it takes a lot of maintenance to grow these trees.
So we have a lot work days to. Not only plant the trees at the beginning of the season, but to take care of them, to prune them, to do weeding, we fertilize. Each tree has a stake. We have an irrigation system that needs maintenance, and so we're always looking for volunteers to come out and help us maintain our tree nursery.
It's on a community land bank property, so it's a community garden plot. And then we also are often looking for volunteers to help us plant at our schools and when we get grants to plant in those community spaces.
It's a really fun way to help out because you get to walk away literally seeing a difference. There was not a tree there when you arrived and now there is and we're planting sometimes upwards of 50 to 70 trees at a site and so it's really amazing to walk away and have kind of that like instant gratification that you did something.
And so I think that's a really great way to kind of step into the sustainability space in Columbus is just to literally get your hands in the dirt and help plant. But we also do a lot of litter cleanup efforts. Throughout the year, we do the Scioto Sweep in the fall.
You get to get in a kayak and clean up litter on the Scioto River. And we often work with groups who need help taking care of their community, help them organize events and gather volunteers. But if you don't have time to volunteer, if you're kind of like, I'm just, I have too much going on.
We do have a monthly event called Green Drinks. And it's just like, hey, come out and see us. We're real people doing real work and we're gonna have a beer and learn about something sustainability related. We actually have Green Drink tonight. We're gonna be packing native seed packets to give away for, we're calling it seed dating.
We're gonna make people get up and switch seeds every now and then and talk to someone new while they're filling seed packets. But that's just a good way to kind of meet more community and not just Green Columbus, find out about other groups that are looking for volunteers and opportunities.
Juravich: And you could support WOSU right now. This is our membership drive and this is 89.7 NPR News and we're learning all about tree planting and the nonprofit Green Columbus right now, I wanna say thank you to Susan Sturgill in Columbus and also thanks to Teresa Burskin from Columbus.
So eight more to go this hour. We have about eight minutes left so we can definitely meet our goal and make this hour a great success. And right now your support can grow into something that you can literally see.
A native tree will be planted in your honor by Green Columbus. And every $5 you add to your gift adds another tree. So make your contribution right now and grow your impact. The more you give, the more trees are planted at wosu.org is where you go.
You select the tree planting thank you gift from the list and then you choose the quantity, increase the quantity for the number of trees you'd like to plant. If you are already a member of WOSU, This is a great opportunity to make an additional gift right now, because your additional gift will support all of the listening you've been doing in the recent weeks and months.
And it'll support your listening in the months to come. It's a great way to make this membership drive a great success when you give an extra gift right know. And you will be able to plant a couple of trees with your extra dollars that you give right now.
So, consider making that additional gift at wosu.org and planting some trees. We just heard from Rebecca Hunley in Columbus, and she writes, supporting WOSU and the health and wellbeing of our neighbors. It's a great win-win.
Thank you, Rebecca, for that comment, and we couldn't agree more. So we'd love to hear from seven more people before the hour ends. We have six minutes remaining in the hour. We'd love hear from more people to meet our little mini goal this hour, make this hour a great success, but also to plant more trees here in Columbus.
Support this station. Show your support, plant some trees. It's a great partnership. Give a wosu.org. In the couple of minutes we have left back to the city's "Urban Forestry Master Plan." You mentioned this earlier.
They wanna have a 40% canopy by 2050. But then, and then the third part of the plan is equitable tree canopies for all neighborhoods, which is a part of your mission as well. So tell me about some, where we're talking here.
Whenever you say, when I say, that these trees WOSU members are helping us give, will be planted in Columbus. Like, where are we talking that needs more trees?
Douglas: Yeah, so we are our tree giveaways from our Linden nursery are hosted and one is at our nursery in Linden. One is at the Barrett Community Center on the south side and one is at The Dodge Community Center in the west side.
So some of the lowest tree canopy areas of the city are South Linden, our Franklin 10, the hilltop on the south side. And these are also the communities that have experienced disinvestment. Things like high rates of asthma.
I think it recently came out that the age expectancy in Franklin 10 is 60 because of the health impacts that they're facing due to lack of tree canopy and pollution from highways and industries and things like that. So we are giving first dibs to the people living in these communities on our free trees.
And then we are also looking for those places where we can plant trees in those communities first because we know that they need them most. Also trees, 10% increase in tree canopy relates to a 12% decrease in crime.
So a lot of these communities need help kind of building this community pride, having more safety, having people feel sense of ownership over where they live. Planting trees is a great way to do that. That's an interesting
Juravich: So more trees is less crime. Is it just because everything looks a little prettier?
Douglas: Yeah, I think they're still kind of studying why, but the study has been repeated. It's not just in one city, it's been repeated in urban and in rural areas. And I think it has something to do with the mental health impacts of trees. People have lower rates of aggression and mental health, mental illnesses when there's more trees in their community.
Juravich: I wanna say thank you to Lawrence Tooth from Buckeye Lake. Six more to go, six more gifts, and we can meet our goal for this hour. For this hour, we're highlighting a special offer.
With any gift, WOSU will plant a native tree on your behalf through Green Columbus. You can add more trees in $5 increments. Make your contribution now and see your support take root in your city.
The more you give, the more trees are planted. So you're supporting your local public radio station. You are planting more trees through a great nonprofit, Green Columbus, and you're support your city. It's a win, win, won. Give now a wosu.org.
Thank you to Eileen Shaughnessy from Columbus who writes, I appreciate the tree planting by Green Columbus. So Eileen says thanks to you. And now we have five more to go. And we have about three minutes left.
We can definitely meet this goal when we hear from you. And not only does your gift plant trees in Columbus, but it also helps power local news and programs and conversations that you rely on. It's steady support that makes a real difference every day.
Make a gift right now at wosu.org. So in one minute left, just I wanted to give you another opportunity to plug your Earth Month and what you need people to help with.
Douglas: Yeah, so at all times, you can go to greenseabus.org and look at our website of what we have coming up on the events. But we need you to come out and volunteer for Earth Month. You can find the tree plantings at earthdaycolumbus.org.
And you can find us at Scioto Audubon Metro Park on Sunday, April 26th. We're gonna be celebrating all of those volunteers that did the hard work, food trucks, beer, live music. And that's when you can find out where we're going next. And you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and we post calls for volunteers there all the time.
Juravich: All the time. All right. So not just Earth Day. Earth Day happens to be April 22nd, but we're talking Earth Day is every day, right?
Douglas: Earth Day every day.
Juravich: Well, we have been talking about tree planting efforts with the executive director of Green Columbus, Shelley Douglas. Shelley, thank you so much for joining us this hour. Thank you so, much. Thanks for planting trees. Yes, and for this hour only, we have a very special offer.
With any gift, WOSU will plant a native tree on your behalf through Green Columbus. You can add more trees in $5 increments. Make your contribution right now. And not only does your gift plant trees in Columbus, but it helps power local news and the local programs you listen to every day.
During this hour, your donation does more. A native tree will be planted in your honor by Green Columbus, and you can expand your impact with every $5 that you give. It's another tree. Make a contribution now and plant more trees with every dollar.
The more you give, the more trees are planted, and the more you show your support for public radio as well. Give right now at wosu.org. Make that gift. It's $5 for one tree, $25 is five trees.
50 dollars to WOSU and Green Columbus can plant 10 trees. Give now at wosu.org or call us 866-897-9678. This, you are running out of time. We're down to the last minute. This is the time to support All Sides during our membership drive. Support public radio.
If you listen to All Sides every day, you know this show is committed to producing in-depth, focused conversations on issues important to Columbus and central Ohio. You hear facts straight from experts. You hear newsmakers on this show.
Support this talk show and do some good at the same time by planting trees. Give right now at wosu.org or call us 866-897-9678. This is listener supported WOSU FM and HD1 Columbus. We're online at wosu.org.
And we're down to the last few seconds of the hour. Your chance to join us and plant some trees, select the tree planting gift. In our thank you gift list at our website, increase the quantity to the number of trees you would like and support public radio at the same time.
Go to wosu.org right now. Thank you for listening and thank you for your support. I'm Amy Juravich.