so it's my pleasure now to uh introduce Lawrence Abbott and Brett de Marie he'll be giving the talk how to choose the best native Street tree for your garden Lawrence is a retired biologist and restoration ecologist who lives in San Leandro he has been and is still a tireless advocate for Habitat protection and native plants Brett is a landscape architect and arborist he currently serves as a landscape architect with San Francisco Public Works Brett also lives in San Leandro which who knew that San Leandro was such a like ecological hot spot because Stephanie lives there too where he has advocated for adding native tree species to the city's Street tree list and he serves as the planting lead in the city's Cal Fire Grant funded restoration effort so and I'd like to acknowledge and thank Brett for creating the terrific California Native Street tree list that you'll find on the Doug Ptolemy section in the beginning Bethany of garden tours website you're welcome to download and just to get this list and we hope the list is useful to you when you advocate for your local government to add more California natives to their street to this so let me go now and welcome Brett and Lawrence um so why native uh trees you know we don't have much time so I don't need to talk about this the way that Kathy set this all up I mean you've been I've been following along you've been learning everything um you know Doug talamy teaches everything about ecosystems and native plants and so the only difference with trees to regular gardening is they say that in regular gardening um you know if you're afraid to lose a plant and a plant dies and it traumatizes you and you shouldn't be a gardener because that happens a lot well with trees you want to have a lot more planning in advance and you want to make sure you get it right from the beginning and so that's why we're doing this presentation and especially with Street trees and um by the way street trees is um it can be interpreted in many ways and it really shouldn't it's really too broad a brush it's too um you know streets trees in San Francisco are very different than streets that follow a farm or or a very large estate right so we're going to cover a little bit of both you have a lot more choices for your street trees if you have a lot of space both above ground and below ground for your trees to grow and uh we'll talk a little bit about narrow spaces and whatnot too so I don't think I need to read anything on this slide next slide please so um the considerations for Success like I mentioned before you want to look at the space above and below ground you want to consider everything you know using ecosystems approach like if you're planning on putting solar on the south side of your roof in the near future you certainly wouldn't want to plant a large tree on the south side of your house right so always think about the genetic potential of your tree how big and how wide it wants to get and think about the future and think if you you know if you're getting older do you if you want to plant say a tree that grows large and you say oh I'll just keep pruning it smaller think about you know do you really want to be out there fighting a tree that wants to grow to be 100 feet tall and you want it to be 20 feet tall same thing with shrubs by the way for landscape design just always and that's what we'll focus on during this talk is um you know putting the right plant in the right spot and so uh at the bottom I talk about pruning and special tricks so so if you don't have space for a large tree but you want a small tree no problem at all the easiest way to do that is put it in a pot a small pot and you have a little Bonsai sitting on your patio table a larger pot and maybe you have a six foot tall Valley Oak and you won't believe all the insects and birds that that brings especially with my favorite tree which you might notice coming up over and over again the California Valley Oak next maybe I should say okay so narrowing your choices and um so uh what I like to do is um you know first of all take all those considerations then for myself well you're lucky first of all I should say if you can afford a landscape designer because they can really help you a lot but even if you have a landscape designer or planner you probably have your own ideas just walking through East Bay Regional Parks or wherever you go Botanical Gardens and of course we always steal ideas from nature and try to uh for myself anyway copy nature to not only bring the diversity to your home but also bring um you know the the animal diversity so um you can decide if you want one big specimen tree or if you want to plant a whole bunch of little trees close together or you know even if you put a lot of larger trees closer together they won't grow high and wide they'll grow sort of crowded and this is of course assuming you have a very large front yard so the reality of your street could be pretty brutal for plants you know maybe the backyard is better depends on the size of your yard small yards or in if you're in the middle of town can be pretty brutal the heat that comes off the sidewalk and Roads and just the environment in general maybe you don't get a lot of waterproof maybe you don't have a lot of soil area even to create a bioswale and you know get water to go down on the soil again fighting genetics I don't want to do it anymore I'm getting too old for that and um yeah and think about uh about your tree that you're choosing if make sure that if it is a tree that tends to have invasive Roots maybe that doesn't belong in the front yard if you have an old style sewer system where the roots can get in there or what kind of utilities you have underground bread will talk about that so right tree in the right place next slide please and I think Brett is this where you're starting yeah um thank you Brett sure so uh yeah so planting the right tree in the right place um there are some considerations um when when choosing a tree uh to really make sure that it's appropriate for um the place where you you want to put it so um you know your own yard is really the easiest place to start uh and it's also a really great place for small to medium trees uh because you do control that space and uh there are very few conflicts as far as things like utilities uh in a residential backyard um that's not to say that a large tree couldn't work I think we saw some examples of that in other presentations of large Oaks um but something to consider is that uh California tree law does allow your neighbor to start pruning your tree if it begins to grow over their yard um and that you're you know you do have to commit to that maintenance um and potential issue so that's a factor to consider city parks are also I usually uh you know very easy place to provide trees for similar reason to to yards in that there are often you know few utility conflicts and lots of space so it's a great place for really large trees are really large native Oaks uh in city parks um and so we'll talk about kind of the advocacy in working with your city to see if you can um get more native trees planted uh in your Park system um and then the third one here is Street tree situations which are the most challenging uh and and there really are a lot of factors that um that go into that and why uh native trees and uh Street tree situations can be difficult to navigate uh next so uh for Street reconsiderations like what I like to say here is that this is where our goals of environmental sustainability have to also meet and reconcile with operational sustainability um and so when we're working on uh Street plans uh in my line of work in city of San Francisco and really any uh kind of Municipal landscape architect or arborist the things that that go into making these decisions um our consideration of utility conflicts and so that would be above and below ground we're talking about overhead lines more power in San Francisco we have electrified bus lines uh stop lights um and underground we have utility vaults for electrical and Telecom and gas uh we have this storm sewer system underground uh there's even you know areas where there's a Subway tunnel underground and so these are all things that can be limiting factors on the kind of tree that can be uh placed adjacent to those utilities and be compatible with them other factors would be lines of sight and so that would be maintaining traffic safety regulations for uh vehicle line of sight making sure that uh trees aren't blocking the view of a crosswalk so that pedestrian safety is taken into account and so these are all things that go into city code um there are clearance requirements we like to have trees really ideally about a 10 foot canopy height above of the street when they're directly adjacent to the street so that they don't get hit by buses and trucks um and then another Factor that's very important is pedestrian clearances and so that's uh that would include things like um you know low hanging branches you can imagine over a sidewalk if somebody uh used to cane and uh had um uh site issues or mobility issues that uh blow hanging branches can be a problem uh for those people and so we do need to factor in those requirements which are very clearly uh spelled out on the Americans with Disabilities Act the next slide uh and so this is an example here of where three trees can be very challenging uh to because the spaces are are quite narrow we're dealing with a lot of reflected heat off of concrete and asphalt and in many places we have a small amount of soil um not a lot of space for a root Zone there may or may not be a good drainage in these spaces um and and this can be a very limiting factor and I think this is a picture you took Lawrence is that right of a tree that fell this winter correct yeah there's two trees there's another tree right behind it cut down right right so this is a tree that um wasn't really able to develop an appropriate root system in this confined space and so uh with saturated soil and wind it could not hold on to the ground and uh resulted in a failure here and this can cost people lives so this is this is something to really consider with uh Street tree plantings the next slide so then the other considerations though um when choosing a tree um going back to some things that Lawrence kind of touched on at the beginning of this talk um is really looking at what is nature already doing uh where you live so if you're looking at wanting to choose a native tree uh for your yard um look around and see what's actually already thriving in my neighborhood and that gives you clues about what's a what's really already happy and compatible with your local conditions um and those factors that usually kind of come into play are things like exposure so how much sun wind things like fog if you're right on the coast that are either you know can be necessary for the tree uh to develop in a kind of healthy way that reaches its full potential or they can be very limiting too um consider soil type looking at soils that have lots of clay sand uh loam and which trees are compatible with those things and for example temple in San Leandro we have a lot of clay clay drains very slowly so we have some freeze that really want to be in Sandy quick draining soil that we have a hard time growing here so um the key is to really start thinking about these factors that work with the ecology that the tree evolved in so that it's already adapted to those conditions and you're not fighting it um water availability is a factor if a tree requires supplemental water in the summertime in perpetuity um probably not a good choice if you don't have that already happening in the landscape but on the flip side if it's a tree that needs to be somewhere dry you don't want to plant it in the middle of a lawn uh that'll end up shortening the lifespan of the tree as it encourages diseases again think about mature size and the compatibility there and you know if you're signing up for kind of ongoing maintenance to prune the tree to kind of keep it small um just just consider that that kind of as a long-term investment and there are a lot of helpful resources out there there's um that have this information about various trees that will kind of help you and guide you to making these selections um calscape is of course an excellent website for that I also reference selectri which is uh through Cal Poly San Luis Obispo a lot of great information there especially if you're wanting to add a street tree in front of your house um and then even websites uh from places like Los pelitas I find very very comprehensive and useful as well next slide but your city's list of approved Street trees can be modified to include more Natives and uh this is something that we did here in San Leandro uh so I'll kind of go through that a little bit in the next few slides um but consider that this change is often incremental and can be a little bit slow and involves some compromises to make it happen because you're usually dealing with a pretty large group of stakeholders to kind of make this happen uh we were able to get uh slightly more than 50 percent of our City's degree list amended to include native trees and we consider that a success because it didn't have any when we started can I asked Brett how long did it take you to move from not having any to having 50 on the street treatist uh it took a few months because we had the right people involved it was actually pretty quick in our case um but we would love to see this number increase and we think that's going to take more time um uh Parks departments are often a really great place to start as well because there are fewer considerations there's uh with Parks there's there are usually fewer people involved in making these decisions because you don't have the utility and traffic overlays and those people involved that you need to convince about things so parks are really kind of the low-hanging fruit of getting more native trees in your in your landscape uh in in the municipal places um and then of course backyards uh even better so what you can do um in your own place um so then the um the the last thing that I want to touch on here and that was so important um was really the uh the fact that we built a coalition of citizens here in San Leandro to make that happen um when the city announced that they were going to be pursuing um a grant from Cal Fire uh 5 000 increase to be planted funded through that Grant so many people were very excited by this um but at the same time we realized hey actually we we really don't have a great Street list here at all it's kind of has we have our sort of usual suspect of trees where we're not happy with crepe myrtles incos calorie pair kind of things we we don't want to see more of if we're planting 5 000 trees this is an amazing opportunity to plant native trees um so uh when we had uh sort of a critical mass of people together uh with this goal we engaged with the city and we had a really receptive uh sustainability manager here in San Leandro um who who listened to that and we were able to um start working with the city to amend that list we go to the next slide um this was our sort of community generated wish list of native trees so uh this group I think we we called ourselves the uh citizens for homegrown habitat uh or neighbors for homegrown habitat uh throughout Google group uh we began to kind of put our heads together and think about the different types of native trees uh that made sensor in San Leandro um and classifying them in ways that would help us go to the city and say we think these trees can work if you put them in these conditions so we had small medium and large trees um we looked at things like um you know stuff that summer water needs and overall sort of uh um water use according to the woo calls um uh categorization whether they were friendly with overhead utilities sort of the overall minimum uh tree planting pit size that would be required seasonality overall you know a mature tree size and everything we were working with here was was native to the California floristic province so everything was needed within you know this this ecological region so this is kind of where we started um and then if we go to the next page uh this is where we ended up and so as I mentioned we did not have native trees to choose from in our initial list and everything that's highlighted in green and I know this is this is hard to read uh at this scale but you can see just visually all the green uh line items these are native trees uh and so that amounted to 52 percent um of the 5 000 trees in the grant goal uh as native and we had I think five native Oak species in here we had um we had escalus we had cyanothis we had uh toy on we had um really a big range of um types of trees for all different types of conditions uh in the public right away and the park system next slide uh then this is a this is a photo of our um one of our early plantings this was at Bonaire Park uh in San Leandro um and uh we got a great turnout this was last uh fall I think it was September kind of a strangely rainy day in September uh and we were planting Alders and Pacific wax myrtle and I think we had some Oaks in there is that right Lawrence yeah we did yeah I think we had some Valley Oaks in there um and yeah and Coast Live up too I was Live Oak yeah and we had um we had families in the neighborhood uh that turned out we had uh high school students from the cross country team um some people were experienced with planting trees other people had never done it before um but it was really a lot of um kind of synergy here happening between um the city's uh kind of guiding us along with um a non-profit partner and uh people in the city who were very very excited about making this happen and bred by now many of those people have been trained as tree leaders and they're training other people so I mean it's just all good when Community gets together and and you know fights for Greening spaces the right way so it's really been wonderful and next slide please I'm not going to talk about the next couple slides all of our tree leaders that you saw most of those folks in that picture they've learned how to plant trees according to the international Society of our work culture standards which are pretty much the standard now you know they've been working for many years with um UC Davis botanus and arborists and really refining the techniques so we have a lot of success I think to date we haven't actually lost a single tree that we planted we've already had about five or six tree plantings and Brett and I try to help with as many of them as there are and by the way we can't cover everything in this talk so um we invite you all to come down and do a tree planting with us and you know speak to Brett or myself or whoever's there and uh and pick our brains and at the same time you can learn these techniques Hands-On and plant some trees next slide please so there's more of the proper way to plant those and the easiest way to find this if you can't get a hold of this link although we'll post these links in the chat is to just do a Google search or internet search and just ask for international Society of arboriculture standards for tree planting or for pruning or whatnot next slide please and uh so here is um the uh the link the first link uh is the link to come and uh sign up to get uh emails for whenever we're going to do a tree planting and where and when the logistics and uh as I said come join us next slide please so here's the um the beginning of some of our photographs of Street trees and um Stephanie or Kathy feel free to join in if these are your photographs and by the way I appreciate everybody that sent those pictures we couldn't include them all and we tried to focus on photographs and stories that you sent us that were clearly Street trees because you know native trees are wonderful but um we're trying to get them right on the sidewalk right near the sidewalk and so that's what we're going to show you here in fact Brett speak up on any of these two because I think this is a sycamore my screen's really sure yeah this is a photo from San Francisco this is um platinus Ray Samosa Roberts cultivar it's our native California Sycamore planted in um a rather high water table but Sandy area of San Francisco um and this is a much more appropriate tree than the non-native Sycamore it's much more vigorous and adapted uh and it does not have the powdery mildew issues that we see on the non-native and so this is a tree that's become increasingly available in the nursery trade that's one of my favorite trees and I have it I planted it in my front yard about 20 years ago and about a one gallon size and now it's over 30 feet tall and it's had amazing Birds nesting in it including Hawks next slide please um this was another Street tree planting in San Francisco this is quercus tomatella the island Oak and this is a very windy site but with some good access to groundwater this was a bit of an experimental planting but these trees have grown quite a bit since they went in about two years ago they're they're very happy um and so we wanted to see if we could start to incorporate some native Oaks uh in in mystery tree situation Brett what have you done to um to be very confident that there's enough soil there so that those trees aren't going to blow over like we saw in another slide sure um so in this particular case the tree bits are actually larger than the standard um and uh in some places we have actual um kind of trenching underneath the sidewalk areas with uncompact and soil that allows the roots to expand outward under the uh deeper under the paved areas thank you next slide please uh this is another one I took here at San Leandro of um this is a native oak on eStudio Avenue by the San Leandro Public Library Lawrence and I were trying to ID this one I I thought it was work as Chris Olympus um but we weren't 100 sure we can fight about it afterwards yeah absolutely please oh this is a fun one we really had this is I think this was our last planting is that correct it was yeah and it was uh in between all the storms and uh I wanted to talk about the plants that you chose and I think you actually designed this Landscaping is that correct yeah this is an industrial area in San Leandro this was kind of a throwaway space um uh next to a warehouse but it's a city-owned piece of property and um we actually have pretty good soil here it was loamy uh and so in some of the wider parts of this strip we fit in I think about 12 of these uh quercus whistles any the interior Live Oak and then in the narrower stretches we have um uh heteromellies the Toyon so really trying to create some kind of bird uh habitat space here um and I'm really hoping that if we do enough of this in these kinds of spaces throughout town we'll we'll get that kind of critical mass of of um of Breeze that will help birds and insects uh and can really create that kind of Mosaic of spaces across the city and thank you hope for saying that comment nice I agree it's just amazing we you know we're familiar with these plants especially with Toyon and just imagine what that'll be like in a few years where now you know this is an industrial space is you know a good spot for the Cedar Wax wings and Robbins to stop and uh and nesting and whatnot so you know you asked somebody just asked a question about understory we are working pretty closely with another group that popped up in town at the same time that Brett mentioned the um homegrown habitats group and we have uh links to that at the end also um where um we're hoping to come back later but in the meantime we have a lot of mulch there which will help improve the soil further and you know help with water absorption and and prevent water loss during the summer so next slide please so this is a slide that um Kathy did you send me this one it's just a Coast Live Oak I think in a roundabout in Berkeley if I'm correct I did this was the start of the neighborhood pollinator pathway in Berkeley that's open on Saturday May 6th this Oak as a Coast Live Oak was planted in 2005 in the parking in the uh traffic circle what a great place for a big Oak and I just can't wait you know 100 years from now to just imagine what that'll be like next slide please are you familiar with this one I am I sent it this is the uh oh is it Oak I think and it was taken on the Contra Costa campus which Contra Costa Community College has this fantastic extensive uh Native plantings around now they started some years ago and they're just gorgeous and so this is one of them I absolutely love that you know I I love the more we get away from uh popsicle trees whenever we have the space that lets us do it and get to more of the natural form it just Thrills me next slide please so um one of the things to consider if you call an arborist say to shape your tree they're likely to prune everything according to ISA standards and if it's a small tree they'll start to shape the scaffold and whatnot but do let them know you know they're focused on the health of the tree and the safety of the tree uh and you know the future health and safety of it so they're they're developing the scaffold that will grow into a strong tree that will last many many years but at the same time you know the ISA standards might be cutting off Crossing branches or too many branches towards the center of the tree but bird nests love to be built in Hidden spots so you know let let your arborists or your um your Landscape designer or contractor know what your goals are whenever you're planting trees that's a bush tit Nest next slide please and uh same thing if uh in my uh mind I always want to see more snags I want to see more places for woodpeckers to build natural cavities uh three trees probably not too practical to have you know the danger of a snag falling on somebody's so bird boxes next slide please and I think another just an example of uh Oaks right along the street and you can just imagine how incredible that will be in the future because it's already wonderful next slides please oh wow that's see a note this is can I pop in this is Anita primera's Garden in Richmond her garden is on the tour you can see it on matter uh Saturday May the 6th and uh the slope to the right was once just a solid mass of ID and Anita has seen uh she's counted 21 bird nests in her garden in the last four or five years next slide please lovely this is the BART uh station in um Albany uh on um I think salon by Solano Avenue somewhere around there across the street from that uh Brazilian um restaurant so you can see that you know a lot of uh shrubs can also be small trees and you can um some of these I mean this is just wonderful next slide please so this is Stephanie's house you want to talk about this Stephanie this is pretty cool yes so um this is the side strip around my property and here in San Leandro it's the responsibility of the homeowners to keep that in shape and you can also on the upside um get a tree planted when you choose from the city's list this was uh last March so it's just over a year ago and the list wasn't quite there yet but as Brett said we were working on it and I bought this live uh Coast life Oak myself and then this guy on the left a city person planted it for me they did a really nice job planting it and so I paid for the tree but the city was willing to plant it so I can't wait for it to grow up and I'm thinking if you live in a city where there's not yet native trees on the list maybe try that just say you know how about a native one I'll buy it would you would I be able to plant it um because a lot of the street folks or in San Leandro Lawrence you might have had the same experience I asked for buying those native trees and they were like uh no real reason that's literally what they said well and that's just not a very wide parking strip is it but two and a half feet something like that it's three feet wide it's not very wide and I want to say so this was um great like actually a couple things there used to be a lot of parking on here so it's a pretty challenging spot because the soil is compacted I got the city to actually because the Street's super narrow one time a fire truck couldn't even get through so they made it no parking on that side so now I've had the guts to actually have that tree there and the the three guys said don't do the gravel put put mulch all along that um medium there or that side strip because it'll it'll make the soil just so much more um uh soft or useful for for the tree so it might just have to grow wide in One Direction fingers crossed yeah and I think it's pretty safe bet because um Stephanie lives just a few hundred feet from the San Leandro Creek and the area is a little more alluvial soil and the water table is also very high so if you're going to plant anything like that in a very narrow strip if you have those kind of soil conditions uh Valley Oak or Live Oak Valley yeah Valley Oak for Coast Live Oak are just ideal because their roots go down really deep they go into the water table and I think it's going to be fantastic there and you'll see a picture of a very old uh same kind of tree in a narrow strip later and it'll blow your mind next slide please we have about three more minutes Lawrence just so yeah so let's just go through these um anybody want to say anything about these otherwise we'll just zip through them yeah this is a coastal Live Oak planting um to think this might have been out in your Livermore or Dublin um further east in the East Bay wonderful next slide please um this is somebody a shot of somebody's front yard front yard so this is a Coast Live Oak on the left my husband and I planted it but it was six inches tall 30 years ago and it's now about 25 feet tall and that's a buckeye on the right that we planted from seed about 24 years ago these keystone species keep popping up over and over huh next slide please so this is a buckeye you saw it with leaves on one picture and here it is uh with some summer drought so if you discontinuing watering and just let them get the water that they would get from the season uh that's what they'll look like uh mid-summer next slide please there's that Oak I was talking about in quite a narrow strip and uh I'd say it's doing pretty well next slide please uh this is I think a cyanotis in San Francisco I think it's there it is right there your mission in San Francisco pretty awesome next slide please so this was just taken at the Hedgerow Farms I just went to the California Native grasslands association annual meeting over there and they've planted all these plants right along the road and it's just amazing for I love this you probably couldn't get away with this in certain cities because it's probably a wooden meet their coat or whatever but I love to see a lot of natives planted together and actually see some overstory some you know complexity to the structure and this is what birds absolutely love and what we need to see more of is and it can be cleaned up a little and still be incredibly valuable but to have different species of natives filling in the mid-story and the understory is so beneficial to Wildlife next slide please and this is San Leandro not too far from San Leandro Creek it was a mass year I don't know if you can see what the sidewalk is covered in acorns and I'm still giving away acorns from this Coast Live Oak it's one of the probably original uh you know lineage right here in San Leandro and if you want to grow one my contact information is at the end of this presentation next slide please so this is just not far from there and this is a Valley Oak that's just spectacular it's at the corner of Wana and uh shoot what's the other Street well it's on one if you drive down wanna in San Leandro you'll see this it's a massive tree the canopy goes from one side of the street to the other and I have plenty of acorns for this too that have been kept in the refrigerator if you want to if you have some nice deep soil and you want to put a valley of next slide please and this is a Valley Oaks just taken a few days ago as the snow melts on the way to my daughter's house in Modesto and they can take a lot of flooding and just do fine and there's my contact information really enjoyed this thanks so much Kathy it was great to have this presentation it was very exciting I want to congratulate you and like I want to move to San Leandro that's going to be my next time your neighbors hey we're so lucky man it's really amazing when you find a kindred spirits right in your right in your own backyard