Our partners in the WSU Ravenholt Urban Forest Health Lab completed an analysis to identify priority Tacoma public schools (K-12) for tree planting. In this analysis, WSU ranked Tacoma’s public schools based on 5 metrics, then averaged the ranks of each school to identify ten schools as priorities for urban greening efforts. Learn which schools rank highest.

Trees are the point of connection for everyone who works with the Tacoma Tree Foundation. We share a love of trees and the conviction that they make Tacoma's communities resilient in the face of climate change. This is the first of a series of posts titled, “Trees of Significance.” In our first entry, we consider the cultural significance of trees, focusing on the relationship between the Jacaranda and the Yoshino Cherry Tree, two trees of significance for Director of Partnerships and Communications, Adela Ramos.

Our Green Blocks: Parkland program in 2023 taught us about the history and resilience of the Parkland community. In this piece, we consider Parkland’s history and delve into the details of our Parkland planting project.

We share the highlights and accomplishments of 2023, a year of planting for and in community.

Executive Director, Lowell Wyse, explains why the newly approved street tree ordinance will help make Tacoma more resilient in the face of climate change by better regulating tree pruning and removal, allowing fruit trees in the right-of-way, and celebrating heritage trees.

Does the health of our trees reflect the health of our communities? In this post, Joey Hulbert, PhD, Forest Health Watch Program Director, and his team explain why diversifying the trees in our urban forest is an important means of keeping trees, like the beloved native Bigleaf Maple, and other maple varieties, healthy and thriving.

What does Tacoma need to do in order to confront the health threats posed by the urban heat island effect and the overall challenges of climate change? In this post, Executive Director of the Tacoma Tree Foundation, Lowell Wyse, explains the health and environmental effects of urban heat island, how the Foundation and city and county partners are working to confront these challenges, and the urgent steps that leaders and governments must take today to ensure trees are an essential component of urban infrastructure tomorrow.

In this essay, Eden Standley interviews TTF partners, Robb Krehbiel and Vivian deZwager about their alternative yards, and explains why it is actually greener on the other side—when there’s no lawn. The post provides numerous tips for anyone curious about creating an alternative yard, as well as ways to start small.

How learning about sense of place can help us understand the reasons why neighborhoods either have or lack trees, and how we can draw on place awareness to grow a fairer and healthier urban forest.

Our guide to tree propagation!

This year was our biggest year ever! We distributed 2,276 trees with the help of 154 volunteers and we have so many memories to share, here are just a few of our highlights!

New buildings are required to plant trees but what happens after they’re planted?

New data from our Branch Out event this February offers a promising look at our impact.

Two proposed projects within a mile of each other, in Fircrest and South Tacoma, highlight how different city policies are affecting tree coverage and quality of life in neighboring communities.

At Tacoma Tree Foundation, we believe that community and trees grow together. South Tacoma will be a neighborhood of focus for us in 2022–2023 thanks to a unique collaboration known as G.R.I.T.: Greening Research in Tacoma.

Tacoma Tree Foundation is getting a boost in the new year thanks to the Puyallup Watershed Initiative (PWI).

On a rainy Monday in October, I loaded an Oregon white oak seedling into the back of my car and headed down the road from Tacoma to Portland. It’s not a host gift I would give to just anyone, but the Garry oak prairies form a biological connection across Cascadia, and I did not want to show up at Friends of Trees empty-handed!

Some good stories start in the middle.
This one starts on a rainy day in February 2019, when I first met Sarah Low in a Tacoma coffee shop. Sarah had recently created the Tacoma Tree Foundation, and I was dying to know more.

Walking through the forest at Point Defiance Park, you experience the forest around you as a cohesive system made up of many individual parts. Firs, cedars, madrones, maples, huckleberries, ferns, lichens, mosses, and fungi all exist in chaotic harmony, perfectly suited to the part they play in the health and well-being of the forest. Together, it all works. Together, it’s beautiful.