Driving the streets of South Tacoma, there’s a sleek, black, electric Ford Lightning F-150 truck pulling a trailer. The trailer is carrying a 500-gallon water tank on a mission to water some of Tacoma’s newest trees.
Jaala Smith is the driver of this operation. Smith hooks a bright blue fire hose to a city fire hydrant to fill up the tank at the start of the day’s watering route.
What does Smith, a tree planting coordinator for the Tacoma Tree Foundation, have to say about how it feels to tap into a fire hydrant?
“It rules,” Smith says.
Smith and their colleague, Fulton Bryant-Anderson, are trained and certified to utilize the fire hydrants with prior authorization from Tacoma Public Utilities, so it’s not how everyone should water their trees. Tree watering is important, especially in the first few years of their lives.
Trees need water to get established. That’s something the Tacoma Tree Foundation knows all too well. This watering setup is new for them. Before, they’ve relied on homeowners to water the trees they plant.
“A lot of those trees didn't make it,” Smith said.
But with this planting project in South Tacoma, the organization got enough funding to support weekly watering.
Watering needs vary for different trees and different climates, but the city recommends 15 to 20 gallons every week during the dry season for the first three years of a tree’s life.
With the electric truck and water tank, Smith and Byrant-Anderson will water over 85 trees in South Tacoma every Thursday from April to September. They’ll fill up a 20-gallon water bag that surrounds each tree.
Over the course of a week, water will slowly leak out of the bottom of perforations in these bags.
“ This just is slowly leaching, and so it can slowly absorb all that (water) all the way down to its root system,” Smith said.
The watering work is specifically for trees planted as part of the Safe Tree Routes to School program. The organization received federal funding for the project. It also waters some trees it has planted in city parks, as contracted with Parks Tacoma. And, it is watering trees planted as part of Green Blocks Hilltop.
The Green Blocks program is meant to address all barriers to tree planting, including cost, transportation, time, ability and technical knowledge.
That’s why the organization offers tree stewards training and planting support to help homeowners understand how to care for their trees.
The organization is also able to monitor how the trees are doing. Smith said sometimes they end up pruning and weeding to make sure the tree is as healthy as possible.
“ It is nice to be able to have eyes on them every week,” Smith said.
