How to Create a More Tree-Friendly City 

Life in the big city is REALLY tough for trees. While trees in the wild often live 100 years or more, the average lifespan of an urban tree is just 19 to 28 years, according to the USDA.  What accounts for this discrepancy? Well, many of our urban environments aren’t built for trees—they’re built for…

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How to Help Care for Trees in Your Neighborhood

Here at TreePeople, we do a LOT of planting—in 2024 alone, we put more than 11,000 new trees in the ground! Expanding our urban canopy is critical to building climate resilience. But something that’s just as important is continuing to care for the canopy we have—especially the older, mature trees that make our neighborhoods shady,…

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Get to Know LA’s Protected Trees and Shrubs 

LA’s trees and shrubs are critical infrastructure, providing countless benefits to our communities and local ecosystems. Our native trees and shrubs—which are specially adapted to live in this region—play a particularly important role in our local environment, serving as hubs for biodiversity and beacons of climate resiliency that will cool our communities for generations to…

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Conozca sus derechos Recursos para inmigrantes / Know your rights resources for immigrants

Conozca sus derechos/Know Your Rights Redes de Respuesta Rápida/Rapid Response Networks:  Los Angeles  Long Beach  Central Valley  Kern County  Orange County  San Bernardino/Riverside  Santa Barbara, Ventura & San Luis Obispo SoCal Encontrar a alguien que está detenido/Finding someone who is detained: Recursos legales/Legal resources: 

Ten invasive plants to watch out for in Southern California

Here at TreePeople, we work to transform degraded wilderness areas into healthy, sustainable, biodiverse ecosystems that provide countless benefits to our communities. When we take on these large-scale restoration projects, a big part of the work involves managing invasive species—aka weeding out harmful, non-native plants that damage the ecosystem by crowding out native species. In…

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Has climate change impacted your life? Send us your stories! 

How has climate change impacted your life in Southern California? Have you experienced severe weather events like fire, extreme heat, or flooding? Altered your day-to-day routine because of the changing climate? Or noticed climate-related changes in your community or neighborhood? TreePeople wants to hear YOUR stories for a new research project!  We’re looking for submissions…

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How the Federal Funding Freeze is Impacting TreePeople’s Work 

Recent shifts in federal funding policy have caused widespread confusion and disruption for many nonprofits, including TreePeople.  Our projects rely in part on federal grants. And while the government’s original “funding freeze” is no longer in effect, distributions from some public agencies remain paused, which has forced us to halt some of our crucial environmental…

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Sprouting from the ashes: SoCal’s native fire followers

The recent wildfires took a devastating toll on Southern California, impacting both our urban communities and the wilderness areas surrounding them.  For nature lovers, it can be heartbreaking to see once-lush ecosystems in areas like Eaton Canyon and the Pacific Palisades reduced to ash. But while recovery will likely be a long road, it’s comforting…

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Climate Gardening 101: A New Course from TreePeople

Have you ever wondered how the plants we grow can help combat climate change? How factors like soil health can play a role in making our communities greener and cooler? And what we can do to design better landscapes for a more climate-resilient world?  As we experience the very real impacts of climate change in…

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Help nature heal: avoid recent burn scars!

The wildfires that tore through Los Angeles this month devastated so many of our local communities, as well as some of our region’s most beloved wilderness areas in the San Gabriel and Santa Monica Mountains.  In the wake of this disaster, we’ve understandably received many questions about what restoration might look like in those ecosystems—and…

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How to avoid starting a wildfire during a wind event

Wind and fire have always been part of California’s ecosystem, and many of our native plants are well-adapted to withstanding or recovering from blazes. But as our region has grown denser and more urbanized, major, fast-moving fires have become more common and more dangerous—in large part due to human activity.  Humans are responsible for about…

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Here’s what it takes to plant an urban tree

Life in the big city isn’t so easy for trees—and helping our urban canopy thrive and grow takes a lot more planning, care, and resources than you might expect. Here’s how TreePeople makes sure the trees we plant in our urban environment stay happy and healthy for years to come: 1. Trees need propagation In…

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