When Is the Best Time to Plant a Tree in LA?

As the Forestry Projects Senior Manager at TreePeople,  I have the privilege to see firsthand the changes that tree planting and tree care events make in the lives of volunteer participants. I love watching the joy that comes over them when they step back and see the difference they’ve made.  Over time, they realize that…

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Pacoima Fruit Tree Festival Success: 800 Fruit Trees Distributed

While we were thrilled about the recent rainfall, we must admit we were a little nervous about how it would impact last Saturday’s fruit tree distribution festival at Roger Jessup Park in Pacoima. We needn’t have worried. Enthusiasm and dedication trumped the grey skies: we distributed more than 800 bare-root trees to local residents and…

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Hope For Sale! (And It’s Absolutely FREE)

This past Saturday we hosted another of our Community Sustainability Workshops and got a standing-room-only crowd – maybe it’s the drought? Maybe it’s just that there are a lot of cool, in-the-know people? Or maybe it’s actually because we sell hope. (Okay, we don’t sell it. We give it away for free!) Yes, it’s the driest winter…

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We Need You: Outreach Volunteers Make TreePeople Possible

Last week, Peter Weiss, one of our awesome Outreach Volunteers, and I represented TreePeople at the Pacoima Forward Community Fair at Hadden Elementary School. The event was lovely; lots of folks from the school community and the surrounding neighborhood attended. People were really enthusiastic about becoming TreePeople volunteers and signing up for our classes on…

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Build Your Business Team While Making LA Green

Our greatest strength as an organization is our incredible volunteers. We are lucky to have so many people who love to help and want to do more. An exciting way that TreePeople is able to get more folks involved is through our corporate volunteering program. Our corporate volunteering program was introduced with the goal of…

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Why 57 Million Monarchs Matter

In case you missed it in The New York Times, “This year, for the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared…

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California on Track for Driest Year in Recorded History

Yes, it just rained in L.A. And since this is the season of gratitude, we should all give thanks for that ½” of rainfall, because in this dry year—the driest in 164 years—we need to make every drop count. It’s hard to remember that technically we are in a severe drought. After all, we can…

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Taking on the Tyranny of Turf

It’s lining up to be another dry winter, with water reserves at worryingly low levels. So what’s with L.A.’s obsession with expansive green lawns? How did this landscape ideal, imported from rainy Northern Europe, come to mean the good life in water-scarce Los Angeles? Can we keep it up, or is there a better way?…

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Not Enough Water, L.A.? Look Up.

I am excited to announce that today’s edition of the Los Angeles Times carries a timely Op-Ed that I wrote titled, “Not enough water, L.A.? Look up.” Did Mulholland Get it Wrong? Nearly one hundred years ago today, William Mulholland stood before a crowd of 40,000 near San Fernando and unfurled an American flag, signaling…

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Learning from Australia’s Drought: TreePeople Draws Lessons From Down Under

In 2012, TreePeople began an exchange between government, research and community organizations in Australia and Southern California. The aim of the program: to share innovations, best practices and experience in urban rainwater capture, water conservation practices and drought response—topics that are increasingly relevant as the climate of the American Southwest (and beyond) changes for the…

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