TreePeople
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…
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,…
As toxic ash carpeted many peoples’ yards during the recent LA wildfires, it highlighted an ongoing concern—the way our health is intricately connected with soil health. Contaminated soil is an important human health concern. People can be exposed when we accidentally eat or breathe in soil particles, and young children—who are especially vulnerable—can be exposed…
The recent wildfires in Los Angeles sparked a lot of concern about soil contamination among the general public. They also—perhaps more importantly—exposed a long-standing problem: the serious lack of soil support resources available to most people, including urban soil education, soil testing, and soil remediation options. Despite the fact that people knowingly or unknowingly interact…
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…
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:
TreePeople is proud to present Smoke on the Water, a new exhibition of gouache paintings by artist Merissa Mann, on view June 18–21 and June 25–28 at TreePeople’s Schuman Family Foundation Conference Center. What’s the show about?Drawing inspiration from the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, Mann’s atmospheric and richly layered work explores the delicate boundary between…
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…
Sparks Middle School Greening is Complete! On Saturday, February 22nd, students, parents, community members, longtime volunteers, and school administrators gathered at Sparks Middle School to plant the remaining 23 trees from TreePeople’s 55-tree plan. Joined by the San Gabriel Valley team, members of the education department, and the Green Infrastructure team, this group put the…
No student wants to play on asphalt, but unfortunately, many are forced to learn and play at concrete-covered schools with a severe lack of green space. Here at TreePeople, our School Greening team wants to see that change—we are currently greening more than two dozen school campuses to create healthier learning environments that will keep…
Recently, TreePeople participated in The Broad Museum’s “Never Stop Planting – Social Forest Community Celebration” at Elysian Park. This vibrant event marked the commencement of the museum’s reforestation initiative, Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar, aiming to rejuvenate Los Angeles’ natural landscape while honoring Indigenous traditions. Introducing TreePeople’s Native Plants & Language Project At our booth,…
How can communities manage their landscapes to make them more resilient to climate change? Can native plants and fungi remediate contaminated soil? And how can we better understand soil health in the aftermath of the LA fires? These are just a few of the big questions researchers tackled at TreePeople’s 4th Los Angeles Urban Soil…