Mark Welch, Newton’s Director of Urban Forestry, instructing residents on tree planting on Lincoln St.
Several Newton residents were out planting street trees with the Newton Tree Conservancy and the City of Newton. Home owners joined by neighbors and other residents planted nearly sixty trees purchased by the Newton Tree Conservancy. Mark Welch and his tree crew joined the planting, helping the volunteers finish digging holes started earlier in the week, place the trees and get them watered and mulched.
The home owners have all signed up to keep the trees watered over the next couple of years while the trees settle in and begin to grow. The trees planted today can be identified with their green “tree gators”, a device holding a week’s worth of water.
Tree planting and pruning courses are held by the City and the Tree Conservancy a few times a year.
I noticed quite a few of these today. Totally awesome.
I wish it were 60, but actually it was 41 on Saturday, and we’ll be adding one more tree on West Street to the ones we planted last fall. But it was a lot more than several residents participating. And we will be doing more in the fall at other locations.
What’s also really neat is the variety of species, I think the most varied of any of our plantings. Marc was able to find some elms again (disease-resistant American, which are hard to get). We also did, for the first time in our Community Tree Plantings, a couple of Corylus colurna (Turkish Filbert) which should eventually produce edible nuts. The 17 trees we planted at Wyoming and Nevada, for example, included 11 different kinds: Kentucky Coffee Tree, Swamp White Oak, Cherry, Crabapple, Serviceberry, Turkish Filbert, Pear, Elm, Amur Maackia, and two varieties of Linden. So we’re moving away from a monoculture.