School Greening Update – Fall 2024

Celebrating Pacoima Middle School’s Brand New Living Schoolyard In late September, our School Greening team joined Pacoima Middle School to celebrate their brand new Living Schoolyard, a project led by TreePeople in partnership with LAUSD, SLA, and the California Natural Resources Agency. Principal Garcha shared her pride in seeing the Schoolyard come to life after…

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What to do when a tree is at risk of being cut down

Our urban forest is a precious resource. Trees help cool our streets in a warming climate, create critical habitat for wildlife, and beautify our neighborhoods, too.  We need to be planting more trees—especially in areas that have historically been disinvested in. And it can be extra frustrating when one is at risk of being cut…

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Here’s how to vote for MORE TREES this election season

If you live in LA, there will be three important environmental bond measures on your ballot this election season: Prop 4, Prop 2, and local Measure US. While all of these bonds are a bit different, they have one important thing in common: they’ll support our mission to plant and care for more trees across…

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Anatomy of a Chaparral Ecosystem 

If you’ve been hiking in California, odds are you’ve encountered the chaparral, the most widespread native plant community in the state. Here’s everything you need to know about this amazing (but often under-appraciated) ecosystem: Home to 20 percent of California’s plant species, chaparral is defined by dense, low-lying shrubs like sagebrush, ceanothus, manzanita, and chamise,…

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The Power of Planned Giving: A Greener Tomorrow Starts Today

A Letter from Our Director of Development Dear TreePeople Family, With August in full swing, we celebrate National Make-A-Will Month—a time to reflect on the lasting legacy each of us can leave for the future of our environment. Legacy giving, or planned giving, is an extraordinary way to ensure your values live on, nurturing the…

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How TreePeople is Greening Schoolyards

In the preface to Claire Latané’s Schools That Heal, she reminds us that “It is hard to make healthy schools. Even in neighborhoods that have plenty of resources, most school environments fall short of supporting students’ mental and physical health and well-being.” TreePeople’s School Greening initiative aims to collaborate with school communities to reimagine how…

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The Health Benefits of Nature

In a world glued to screens and constant connectivity, it’s not just a feel-good myth—nature’s got some serious perks for our well-being. Besides the “get off your phone” and “touch grass” cliches, science backs up the fact that spending time outdoors can benefit your health. We’ve compiled a non-exhaustive list of ways that nature can…

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The Urban Forest Loses a Giant: Mourning the Loss of Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne

The urban forestry community lost a giant with the sudden passing of Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne on January 6. Jarlath led a globally respected lab that used high-resolution imagery of the earth to map land cover in our complex urban landscapes at fine level of detail with astounding accuracy. The work of Jarlath’s Spatial Analysis Lab at…

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How to Prevent Your Trees From Falling During Storms

If you were in Los Angeles over the weekend, you no doubt felt the wrath of the winds! A wind advisory remained in effect across Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties throughout the weekend with gusts ranging from 25 mph to 50 mph across the region. Unfortunately, the winds brought dangerous conditions to the…

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Reducing Waste During the Holidays

It’s beginning to (finally) feel and look like the holiday season here in SoCal! With all of the gifts you’ve been giving and receiving recently, you might be looking around at all your wrapping paper, decorations, and food and wondering, “isn’t this wasteful?” Fortunately, we have discovered some creative ways to go green (without turning…

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2023: TreePeople’s Work In Review

We want to thank our entire TreePeople family for making our 2023 one to remember. It’s with your help that we were able to grow our work into new communities, expand our restoration presence in our local mountains, and bring some amazing talent back to our Coldwater Canyon Park headquarters for spectacular events. We launched…

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