Now is a perfect time to grow your garden green. While other parts of the world are snow-covered and frigid, Southern California’s mild, wet winters make this season ideal for planting climate-friendly natives that provide habitat for our native fauna. Here are two beautiful California evergreen shrubs to check out and add to your weekend…
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Building resilient communities one tree–and many neighbors–at a time
January 11, 2013Want to know how to survive the next natural disaster? Think community and good neighbors, not concrete barricades and security guards, as Eric Klinenberg recently recommended. Klinenberg says in an NPR interview, “In light of the risk we face with climate change, I sincerely hope that we invest in the social infrastructure. Because when a real disaster strikes,…
Vote for a local school’s environmental initiatives and send students to the mountains to restore fire-damaged forest
January 9, 2013Starting January 9, students from 17 Los Angeles area middle and high schools will compete in TreeByTree, a social media campaign to win a field trip to help restore fire-damaged wilderness. You can support them by logging on to Facebook over the next five weeks and voting as often as once a day for your…
How Did Hollywood Get Its Name?
December 31, 2012Legend has it that early residents of SoCal were so inspired by a lovely holly-like bush that they were inspired to call their new digs Hollywood. It’s easy to see why the legend spread even if it wasn’t true. The shrub that captured their imagination was the toyon, which grows throughout Southern California. During the…
Come Howl at the Moon with TreePeople!
December 28, 2012In Los Angeles, we’re lucky we can get outside day and night, all year around. Celebrate our favorable climate by joining us for our last Moonlight Hike of 2012–tonight, Friday, December 28, at 6:30 p.m. It’s a family-friendly adventure that starts at TreePeople’s headquarters and explores the nighttime views and sounds of Coldwater Canyon Park….
After Christmas, What to Do with Your Tree?
December 27, 2012Did you opt for a real Christmas tree this year? A lot of us grapple with the choice between real and fake, weighing the proverbial environmental impact of one vs. the other. One dilemma people face with a real tree is, what do I do with it after the holidays? Mulch it! While your tree…
A Native Re-Greening for TreePeople’s Cistern
December 19, 2012Park operations director Jim Hardie calls it the “grasscrete circle”—also known as the TreePeople cistern, a 216,000-gallon underground storage tank, where we save rainwater filtered and collected from rooftops and the Parking Grove. The stored water irrigates TreePeople’s grounds in the warm months. For the past four years, the circle has been planted with wildflowers,…
The Soil Solution
December 17, 2012Soil is as vital to environmental health as the plants that grow in it. If you watched the latest Ken Burns documentary, The Dust Bowl, or if your forebears settled in California because they had to flee the ruined soil of the Midwest, then you know what Burns means by “the worst man-made ecological disaster…
South L.A. Parents Learn to “Prune” Back Asphalt and Bring Nature to Urban School Yards
December 13, 2012On a typical hot, smoggy Los Angeles school day, hundreds of children at South L.A. schools no longer have to broil in unshaded asphalt-covered school yards. Through TreePeople’s School Greening Initiative, South L.A. parents are being trained and supported to transform their children’s campuses into shadier, leafier, cooler—even food-producing—places to learn and play. In early…
Visit L.A.’s first Tree Campus USA, December 16
December 6, 2012Did you know the male gingko tree sprouts smelly fruit? Learn all about it and much more on our next Branching Out Community Tree Walk, as we comb the grounds of Los Angeles Valley College—the first college or university in the Los Angeles area to be recognized by the Arbor Day Foundation as a Tree…
Hook Your Community Greening Project Up with an Expert Volunteer Leader at TreePeople, December 15
December 5, 2012Launching a community greening project but don’t know how to start? Looking for help with a plan that’s ready but needs guidance? Join us for breakfast at TreePeople’s hilltop headquarters on December 15 to get connected with a Citizen Arborist who can help make sure your project succeeds. Citizen Arborists are highly trained, volunteer leaders…
Five Chances to Roll Up Your Sleeves for Trees, December 8
December 4, 2012December 8 is a great day to volunteer! TreePeople invites you to pick your favorite among five rewarding opportunities to pitch in and make Los Angeles a greener city. If you feel ready for advanced tree care, join us at a school campus in Westchester to prune semi-mature trees. Coming from points north and east?…