It’s spring, and we want more students to explore learning gardens and sit amongst trees instead of playing on endless, overheating asphalt. With this goal in mind, we made significant progress across our school greening projects this Earth Month. We’re excited to share how we engaged our community with workshops, gave native plants, planted trees, and more.

At Cedarlane Academy and Rio Hondo Child Development Center, we successfully coordinated the delivery of site furniture provided by our partners at Angel City Lumber. Soon, students will be able to sit and rest in more shaded areas and utilize the outdoor learning spaces we helped design.

In addition to school greening, our Green Infrastructure team hosted two productive Carlisle Street Eco Awareness Workshops. These workshops are part of our green alley project in the City of San Fernando.

• The first took place at the City of San Fernando’s Spring Jamboree, where we distributed 21 native pollinator plants.
  
• The second was held at Rudy Ortega Park in a successful collaboration with TreePeople’s Community Forestry, Watershed Health, Environmental Education and Outdoor Education (EE/OE) departments.

Our work at Wilmington Middle School was equally impactful. In partnership with the EE/OE and the Wilmington Middle School Green Club, we conducted an on-site tree audit activity. This was followed by a tree-planting event where we added 17 new trees to the campus!

Finally, TreePeople recently led a group of Lynwood Unified school district representatives, design professionals, and landscape contractors at Vista High School, Abbott Elementary School, and Lindbergh Elementary School for final project inspections. To date, these greening efforts have resulted in the planting of 93 trees and over 2,000 native plants, as well as the removal of over 16,000 square feet of asphalt.

From asphalt removal to planting trees and native plants, we like to think school greening is where all of TreePeople’s programs intersect. This Earth Month, we were thrilled to collaborate across our departments, with school communities and districts to design, implement, and manage our green schoolyard efforts. These vital projects protect students by mitigating climate hazards, such as extreme heat and air pollution. We look forward to sharing more updates soon!

Curious about the impact of school greening or how you can get involved? Learn more at treepeople.org/school-greening

Updates provided by TreePeople’s Green Infrastructure Team.