This summer, as the sun began scorching the dry Los Angeles area, TreePeople and local high school kids joined together to rescue some very vulnerable young trees, and I got to be a part of it. I was fortunate enough to lead 2 dedicated groups of upcoming seniors who made my job fun and easy. Both…
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Water For Us All!
August 20, 2014“We have enough water to live on, but not enough to waste.” — Dorothy Green, founding president of Heal the Bay. Dorothy Green wrote these words in an article that was published in the LA Times in 2008, shortly before her death. In it, she outlines an incredibly thoughtful set of recommendations that would create…
Intern Spotlight: Jazmine Saucedo
August 18, 2014My name is Jazmine Saucedo, and I am TreePeople. Working with Jack London Continuation High School students through TreePeople’s Youth Summer Tree Care Project has definitely been the highlight of my summer. As a Summer Tree Care Intern, I encouraged and motivated students of underserved areas to care for their environment. This internship provided me…
Intern Spotlight: Elise Cabato
August 11, 2014My name is Elise Cabato and I Am TreePeople. I am currently a Youth Leadership Summer Tree Care Intern this summer for TreePeople. Before my internship I was just an incoming senior at UCLA studying Geography & Environmental Studies trying to get almost anything to build my resume before being thrown out into the real…
Greening Campuses and Cultivating Learners in Compton
August 6, 2014TreePeople has long believed in greening educational spaces: access to green space gives students a place to play and develop creative problem solving skills. Plus, research has shown a strong correlation between access to nature and better cognitive function, self-discipline, and impulse control, and suggests that greener campuses may help improve student attention spans. And at the…
Volunteer Celebration 2014
August 4, 2014About a week ago, we hosted our annual Volunteer Celebration. This was a special opportunity for our highly dedicated volunteers to gather in a casual environment and get to know one another a bit better. We realize that it can be tough for staff and volunteers to get to know one another at forestry events,…
Getting Drought Smart: The Drought Solutions Tour as Inspiration
July 31, 2014Native plant species, rain chains, drip irrigation – and what on Earth is decomposed granite? In my quest for more information on the drought Los Angeles is facing and what I can do at home to cut water usage, I looked to TreePeople’s Drought Solutions Tour and Native Plant Walk, which is one of many…
TreePeople’s Policy Work: Transforming LA into a Climate- and Water-Resilient City
July 20, 2014Each week, TreePeople is out in the neighborhoods and surrounding mountains of Los Angeles, planting and caring for trees and native plants to ensure that our city has a growing, thriving urban ecosystem. But that’s not all we do – every day, we’re also working with agencies and policymakers at the city, county, state, and…
How to Kill Your Lawn
July 16, 2014Things are dry out there. Drought conditions are currently battering California and our changing climate only further puts us at risk when it comes to water security. Across the state, an average of 50% of residential water use goes towards landscaping, killing your lawn and replacing that non-functional turf with native plants is one of…
TreePeople Volunteer Takes on the Drought
July 14, 2014This past Sunday, TreePeople staff and volunteers participated in a special tree care event in North Hollywood. One of our enthusiastic Volunteer Supervisors, Vahagn Karapetyan, had noticed that the trees in his neighborhood were suffering, so he decided to take action. Vahagn Karapetyan has been volunteering with TreePeople for the past two and a half…
AB 2403 Sets the Stage for Stormwater Capture
July 9, 2014It doesn’t rain much in Los Angeles, but it does rain: in an average year, enough rain falls throughout Los Angeles County to supply 650,000 families with enough water to live off if we captured it. For this reason, for more than twenty years TreePeople has been championing rainwater harvesting as a key part of…
Fighting Drought One Lawn at a Time: LADWP’s Cash In Your Lawn Program
July 2, 2014One hundred percent of California is now in a severe drought, and Los Angeles County is even worse off, classified by the United States Drought Monitor as in “extreme drought” conditions. Now, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is calling on Angelenos to do their part to conserve water—and as an incentive,…