Sheet Mulching 101 (part 2 of 2)

Want to see how an average home in Los Angeles can save almost 100,000 gallons of water per year? Here is TreePeople member and volunteer Valerie Fontaine, converting her yard to a sustainable site. With a simple DIY project, Valerie transformed her garden in a weekend. Following Part 1 of our tutorial, here are your…

Read more →

Sheet Mulching 101 (part 1 of 2)

What is sheet mulching? Just the quickest, easiest way to go from a thirsty, outdated green shag carpet of a landscape to a sustainable garden in about the time it takes to mow the lawn. Follow these easy steps and you can do what fabulous TreePeople member and volunteer Valerie Fontaine recently did at her…

Read more →

Grow a Food Forest in a Food Desert

The term “food desert” describes an urban community that lacks access to fresh, healthy food in local shops and grocery stores. These are regions in our city where, for various reasons, neighborhood retailers can’t or don’t stock produce and healthful alternatives to processed fast food. In Inglewood’s “100 Seeds of Change” initiative, residents have taken…

Read more →

Building resilient communities one tree–and many neighbors–at a time

Want 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,…

Read more →

The Soil Solution

Soil 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…

Read more →

South L.A. Parents Learn to “Prune” Back Asphalt and Bring Nature to Urban School Yards

On 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…

Read more →

Visit L.A.’s first Tree Campus USA, December 16

Did 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…

Read more →

Vote for a documentary to make you fall in love with nature

Our founder Andy Lipkis is an expert in the extraordinary film Love Thy Nature and we’d like you to join TreePeople in helping the Director Sylvie Rokab take it to completion.  She launched a Kickstarter campaign (to raise finishing funds) where you’ll see a short video and info about the film. Watch trailer here Not…

Read more →

Would you eat your landscape?

As we near the Thanksgiving holidays, maybe you’re thinking about fall harvests.  But if the land around your house is covered in lawn, consider this: traditional turf uses the same amount of water as vegetable gardens. If you’re going to grow something that uses that much water, maybe you should be able to recoup some…

Read more →

PUT ON YOUR TREE VISION

Could you tell a Leptospermum laevigatum from a Ficus macrophylla? One is familiarly known as a Moreton Bay fig. Still blanking? On Sunday, November 18, join TreePeople’s free Branching Out community tree walk in historic Palisades Park in Santa Monica to develop your “tree vision” and see your neighborhood’s urban forest through a whole new…

Read more →