Spokane has a beautiful urban tree canopy system, receiving the Tree City USA designation for the seventh year in a row. The Urban Forestry office manages manages 50,000 street trees and another 28,000 trees on developed park land within the city. That said, this is an exciting opportunity for you budding treehuggers out there about a program with the Urban Forestry office for their V.I.P program:

Tree fans are being sought for a program designed to improve the future of young trees in public places. The “Volunteers In Pruning” (V.I.P.) program trains local tree fans to prune young trees for form and structure. The program targets trees that were planted within the last three years which is the best time in the tree’s development to establish good tree form and correct any structural problems that can lead to future hazards or tree failure.

The V.I.P. project is sponsored by “Community Canopy,” a tree care education program of the cities of Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, and the Spokane County Conservation District. These communities are pooling resources to train volunteers and supply them with the tools needed to do the pruning. Each community’s forestry program will choose which public trees will be targeted for pruning and will most likely be a combination of park trees and street trees.

 

Anyone 16 years of age or older and interested in the V.I.P. program is invited to attend a three-hour training session.

The training session will be held on Saturday, February 19, at the Spokane County Conservation District Office, 210 N. Havana St., 9:00 a.m. - noon.

The training is FREE in exchange for offering volunteer hours pruning public trees. Because of limited space, pre-registration is encouraged. Contact Garth Davis at 509.535.7274.

For additional information regarding City of Spokane Urban Forestry please call 509.363.5495 or go online to www.spokaneurbanforestry.org

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