Amidst Saturday’s rainy, gray weather, volunteers wearing bright yellow and green safety vests went around the neighborhood near Tacoma’s Mann Elementary school and planted over 80 trees.
The city of Tacoma has been prioritizing tree planting in parts of the city where there are fewer trees, such as south and east Tacoma. This latest effort is a new grant-funded program called SafeTREE Routes to School, which aims to increase tree canopy near schools. Saturday’s tree planting event was the groundbreaking of the project.
“ Trees add shade, they add comfort, they add beauty. They also provide traffic calming by narrowing the visible stretch of the street,” said Chandra Rourde, who is the city’s Safe Routes to School coordinator.
The idea is that visibility is reduced when trees are planted near the street, and that can make cars slow down. That could make it safer for kids to walk, bike or roll to school.
Lisa Kenny, the Community Trees Program coordinator for Tacoma's Urban Forestry program, said volunteers will plant trees on suggested walking routes for selected schools. The city is planning to plant a total of four routes in south and east Tacoma.
To make this possible, Kenny said the city needs a lot of community buy-in. First, they send flyers out to people living in the neighborhood, letting them know they can participate and get trees planted in their right of way.
When households say they want to participate, the Tacoma Tree Foundation, a nonprofit focused on growing Tacoma’s urban forest, does a site assessment of the property. The nonprofit has partnered with the city on the project. Crews look for barriers to trees and determine where a tree would be viable in the right of way, or strip of yard next to the street.
The nonprofit then makes recommendations about what trees would work best and delivers the trees. Then, volunteers go and plant them.
Kelly Kruger was one of the Tacomans who opted in.
“ I definitely love Tacoma's effort for the tree canopy and beautification. Whenever you go to nice, high-end neighborhoods, there's lots of developed, grown trees, lots of coverage. So it definitely helps the community, helps the environment. That's kind of my initiative,” Kruger said.
Kruger helped plant a Magnolia tree in her front yard.
“I want this to be a beautiful space, especially like being in the south end, which is maybe typically a little lower economically,” Kruger said. “So wanting to just beautify the space, especially being so close to a school. I see kids walk by every day.”
With the grant, the city will be able to support tree watering for the newly established trees, which can go a long way to ensure they are healthy.
The funding for this project comes from a Washington State Department of Natural Resources grant of over $1.3 million that will benefit a total of five projects in Tacoma.
Heidi Asplund is the northwest region’s urban forestry technician for the Department of Natural Resources’ Urban and Community Forestry Program. She volunteered at Saturday’s event
“I came out here today to just celebrate planting trees and planting trees in the rain, when it's the best time to plant trees,” Asplund said.
The grant the city of Tacoma received was awarded in 2024.
But new, additional grant funding from the department is paused, Asplund said. That funding comes from federal dollars.
