America needs one million new farmers; returning war veterans need jobs. Enter Ground Operations, the new documentary that follows vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan only to face a daunting transition back to civilian life. As filmmakers Dulanie Ellis and Raymond Singer show, organic food production is creating a restorative road home. Working with soil,…
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How TreePeople Catches Every Drop
March 13, 2013Is Los Angeles a desert? Our city gets about 15 inches of rainfall annually, slightly more precipitation than, say, Missoula, Montana (though we have fewer days per year that are considered “wet”). Did you know this is enough to serve a fairly large population and irrigate its urban greenery? But every time it rains an…
What Kind of Tree Is That?
March 1, 2013Ever notice the trees in your neighborhood? Maybe they are spectacular specimens with giant canopies that shade the streets and make you want to be a kid again and climb to the top. Or maybe they are small, under-cared for, half-dying trees, and it’s not even clear what kind they are. More than likely, it…
Not your typical field trip: 500 students win a chance to replant the Angeles National Forest
February 15, 2013Students from 10 Los Angeles area middle and high schools learned this week that they were winners of sponsored field trips to the Angeles National Forest to help restore fire-damaged areas of one of Los Angeles County’s largest preserved open space. The Facebook-based contest TreeByTree was a collaboration between TreePeople and Edison International. On a…
When Trees Thrive, People Thrive
February 9, 2013We at TreePeople certainly believe that what we are doing is a matter of life and death. But sometimes we’re confronted with more sobering proof than we expected. That’s what happened when I read this article by Lindsay Abrams that recently appeared in The Atlantic, “When Trees Die, People Die.” I expected that this article…
Learn How to Get Your Landscape Really Green
February 7, 2013You may have noticed that some years in Los Angeles County are wetter—or drier—than others. And in wet years you may also have noticed a lot of unfiltered water rushing off paved surfaces, into storm drains, and out to sea carrying whatever pollutants it washes over. So, not only are we losing water that could…
Sheet Mulching 101 (part 2 of 2)
January 24, 2013Want 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…
Sheet Mulching 101 (part 1 of 2)
January 23, 2013What 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…
Grow a Food Forest in a Food Desert
January 16, 2013The 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…
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,…
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…