For the next six months, cities will be taking advantage of cooler temperatures and better soil conditions to care for and grow their urban forests.
One of those places will be Washington, D.C., which will plant more than 100 trees a day as part of an effort to increase the city’s overall tree cover by 40 percent by 2032. Most of those trees will come from a farm just 70 miles west of the city in Berryville, Va. There, on 730 acres of rolling land along the Shenandoah River, Casey Trees, an urban forestry nonprofit, grows a variety of species.
Back when Thomas Jefferson was president, Washington was known as the “City of Trees.” But disease and rapid development brought about a precipitous decline in their number. Now, the city is trying to recover its nickname.
Since 2002, Casey Trees has been working with the government, as well as with businesses and citizens, to plant, maintain and promote healthy trees. For the next year, they’ll be putting in more than 10,000.
