Countywide : Efforts to Plant Trees Catch On

Pale and slender, 21 young sycamores stand in a new home in an Irvine park. A few miles away, 70 new oak trees, their skinny trunks steadied by wooden posts, promise future shade to a school ball field.

In Fullerton, a once-barren lot is garnished with hundreds of trees and shrubs. And in Anaheim, willows and magnolias grow in empty spaces between sidewalks and curbs.

The new trees are living testaments to a trend sparked by two tree-planting groups that joined forces a year ago-- California ReLeaf, a statewide campaign to bolster local tree-planting efforts, and the Tree Society of Orange County, which vows to plant 1 million trees in the county by the end of the decade.

Volunteers turning out in droves planted 3,000 new trees across the county in 1990, said Tree Society President Tom Larson.

“It’s catching on all across the county,” said Ken McGallian, one of nearly 200 residents who turned out Saturday to plant pine trees around the Groves, an Irvine mobile-home park at Irvine Boulevard and Jeffrey Road. By 11 a.m., McGallian and his partner had settled 20 new trees into freshly dug holes.

Residents of the mobile-home park--a site once thick with orange and avocado groves--say they have longed for trees to surround their community.

“These people have been fussing for four years to get the city to do something,” said park manager Neil Anderson. Encouraged by Clay Martin, Irvine’s new “urban forester,” residents took up the shovels themselves, Anderson said.

Volunteers each chipped in $20 for the trees, while the Tree Society gave planting lessons and California ReLeaf presented a slide show explaining how trees help the environment. By the end of the day, 280 trees had been planted.

Genni Cross, California ReLeaf’s Southland coordinator, said new trees are badly needed in Orange County.

“Basically, we’re deforesting the county through development,” said Cross, who directs the tree-planting effort from her Irvine home. Just as aging trees wither, tree budgets have also shriveled, she said.

“Nationwide, there are four trees dying and being removed for every one that gets planted,” Cross said. “Cities and counties don’t have the money to replace them.”

But some Orange County cities are looking for ways to address the problem.

In Anaheim, city workers identified “over 10,000 tree vacancies,” said Maria Cover, park services coordinator. “They found 3,500 vacancies in one small area.”

Assisted by Cross, Anaheim rewrote its law governing street trees and received a $40,000 grant from the state Department of Urban Forestry. Since June, roughly 400 new trees have been planted by ReLeaf Anaheim, a group which aims to plant 20,000 city trees by the year 2000.

“If (volunteers) are healthy and strong enough, they will plant their own trees and then go on and plant their neighbor’s tree as well,” Cover said.

In Fullerton, a 4-acre field that was about to become a parking lot is now covered with shrubbery after being rescued by the Tree Society last November, said community services coordinator Greg Meek. He added that residents raised the money, a local nursery offered drought-tolerant trees at a discount and the city installed hose connections for neighbors to water the plants.

Cross said she has been encouraged by the volunteer response to tree-planting efforts in Orange County. She said she’s planning to start similar groups in Riverside, Bakersfield and Santa Barbara.

“I feel like what we’ve done has been a real success, partly because of the Tree Society’s help and partly because it’s a county that really responded,” she said.

For information call Cross at (714) 725-0323.