Street trees
Spokane is a treehugger’s dream with an urban canopy that highlights a historical beauty in neighborhoods from the South Hill to Browne’s Addition, north to Corbin Park and east to Millwood. The Spokane Preservation Advocates are working hard to help the City of Spokane achieve street tree preservation initiatives. Take it from this blogger’s frontyard near 2nd and Cannon, our trees are absolutely essential to the city.
Also, head to Interplayers Thursday, June 18th, 7pm, as Spokane Preservation Advocates (SPA) will present a free lecture given by Dr. Mike Kuhns, Extension Forester from Utah State University titled “How to Fit Large Trees Into Landscapes.”
For some background info on our street trees, check the following links from SPA after the jump:
Courtesy of Spokane Preservation Advocates
In the early 1900s Spokane thoughtfully planted large-canopy trees along the streets of our many great neighborhoods. In many instances these plantings were part of a deliberate, comprehensive, streetscape plan for this city. (See www.olmsted.org) SPA believes that these large, old trees are now worthy of special attention.
Refer to SPA Update September 2007 for an article on the importance of canopy-forming street trees.
Therefore, SPA created an ad hoc street tree committee to explore ways to preserve and replace in-kind our grand canopy-forming street trees. SPA asks for your increased attention and direct support in our three tightly-focused street tree preservation initiatives:
Increased emphasis for preservation of Spokane's large-canopied street trees
Like-tree replacement (not small-tree, ornamental tree replacement) to maintain Spokane's existing historic neighborhood streetscapes. To replace large-canopy trees with smaller trees because of the existing planting strip size restrictions, negatively alters the look of Spokane's great neighborhoods. SPA believes this as a significant quality of life issue for neighborhood streetscape integrity.
SPA also contracted for a survey asking Spokanites how they felt about their large street trees. Here are the survey results and our follow on letter sent to Mayor Verner.
Through tree preservation education, volunteerism, and funding, SPA stands ready to help the City of Spokane achieve these important large-canopy street tree preservation initiatives.
The following informational sites are great in explaining the benefits of large-canopy street trees:
"The Large Tree Argument"
"How to Fit Large Trees into Landscapes"
"What People, and Trees, Think About Utility Tree Pruning"
http://extension.usu.edu
Background on Street Tree Issue
