The Greening of Urban America Requires a Lot More Than a Gusher of Greenbacks : Environment: President Bush’s call to create street forests will fail without urbanites becoming the guardians of trees.

President Bush’s proposal for a massive urban tree-planting program could transform our nation and the environment. It could also be counterproductive.

The images and mythology associated with tree planting and nurturing stir powerful emotions that cut across cultural, racial, economic and political lines. Accordingly, they have the power to galvanize Americans into taking unprecedented cooperative action. With trees as our banner, we can take on the challenge of ameliorating pollution and rebuilding our cities. Perhaps most important, this movement could reawaken our confidence, as individuals and as a nation, in our ability to solve problems.

But there is an obstacle: If the President and others are persuaded that the only missing ingredient is money, the tree-planting program will surely fail.

Picture this: Thousands line a major urban boulevard, removing concrete from the sidewalk and digging holes. Each team mixes amendments into the native soil, drops in root-control guides that prevent sidewalk damage and pours gravel outside the guides to facilitate delivery of water and oxygen to the roots.

Team members lift a tree, support its branches, and gently remove the pot from its root ball. Steel poles are pounded into position on either side. Special rubber ties secure the tree, loose enough to allow it to sway in the wind and build trunk strength, tight enough to provide protection from a host of urban stresses.

The team dedicates the tree by writing its name--and signing theirs--on a sign affixed to the steel poles. Stepping back, one can see the boulevard in the midst of a profound transformation.

Ecotopia, no. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Los Angeles, Jan. 13, 1990. A community scene that can and must be replicated in cities across the United States if the President’s plan is to work.

Trees in cities need guardians. The best people to perform that task are those who benefit most from trees. But how do you cajole busy or hassled urbanites to look after trees?

A simple law of humanity is that we take care of those we care about. If we invest time, money, resources, spirit and love into a community tree planting, we’re going to water and watch over our charges. Conversely, if our government plants the trees, it should watch out for them.

For the President’s program to succeed, he must be willing to share the credit, for he’s certainly going to share the cost. Large sums of money from government, corporations or even foundations, spent in the wrong way, can actually prevent communities from building their own support system, thereby robbing them of their most essential resource--the passion to create much from little. When neighborhoods must struggle to raise cash to buy them, they invariably become fiercely protective of their hard-won trees. Their passion for tree maintenance and additional planting is accordingly whetted.

Take the TreePeople organization. What is now a nationally known pioneer in the field of urban forestry, with a staff of more than 30 and 600 volunteers and 15,000 members, began as the dream of a 15-year-old boy who lacked corporate “pull” or government dollars. TreePeople has never had a patron to lighten the burden of fund-raising. As a result, the organization has grown the way a strong tree grows: It developed a sturdy support system in the form of grass-roots membership that will be there if government dollars drop away or corporate and foundation funding falters.

The value and real power, the joy and satisfaction of community work--or any work--come from sweat equity. Motivated by politics, or simply by the fatal combination of impatience and ignorance, a sudden influx of government “help” runs the risk of robbing communities of the real satisfaction that can and should come from their efforts at healing the urban environment.

This is not merely moral philosophy. Even with sufficient funds, it’s simply no longer possible to establish trees in most large cities without an extraordinary level of public involvement. The environmental stresses caused by inadequate water, extremes of light and temperature and soil and root compaction make it difficult for local governments to keep newly planted trees alive. And the problem is not only physical, but social as well. Whether it’s the result of anger or a sense of powerlessness and alienation, a large percentage of young, urban trees are victims of random violence. Put another way, unwatched trees get walloped. The only sure long-term solution is to nurture tree stewardship within communities.

How? People need training and guidance. They need support. And they need leadership. At least one model exists.

TreePeople’s Citizen Forester Training teaches ordinary people the extraordinary skill of breathing life into a community. The basics of species selection, planting and care are taught. Instruction on how to organize neighbors, raise resources--labor, supplies and equipment, as well as money-- and work with local agencies to obtain permits and logistical support is provided. Perhaps as important, students learn patience, persistance and perseverance. After their first planting, they learn that the power to reshape neighborhoods and cities lies not with government programs but within.

Citizens in Los Angeles working with TreePeople, citizens in California under the California ReLeaf banner and citizens across the United States under Global ReLeaf are rising up to heal their cities. But urban dwellers themselves need to be healed every bit as much as their cities.

Urban forests cannot be planted without money. But they will not survive without the love and ownership of trained citizens. The vital partnership between citizens and professional urban foresters must be appreciated and cultivated, so when those expensive urban trees are at last purchased and planted, they will stand a chance of survival. To do that, money for professional urban-forest management and for the recruitment and training of citizens is needed.

It’s easy to see that this work isn’t simply a matter of loving trees, beautifying our streets, or attacking the greenhouse effect. Foremost, it’s an opportunity to galvanize the tremendous amount of latent and often-wasted energy residing within our urban populations to help reverse global warming and demonstrate that in working together, we have the energy, resources and ability to solve other problems.

If the President’s plan works, then, in the words of Lao Tse, “When the task is fulfilled, the people will all say, ‘we did this ourselves.’ ”