Growing Shade

“This is fun!” Brandis, a fifth-grader from Maxfield Elementary School in St. Paul, smiles while tucking a tiny seedling into the earth. “I can’t wait to see this tree in 10 years. Or 20.”

It’s a clear, cool spring morning at the Pilgrim Baptist Church just down the street from the school. Brandis and fellow scholars are hard at work installing the first bur oaks, white pines, elderberries, and other trees and shrubs of the church’s future “Green Screen,” a microscale forest restoration that will return native vegetation to the urban site for the first time in decades. Adult volunteers assist with the planting, demonstrating how to bury the roots at just the right depth for best results. Maxfield Elementary teacher Brandi Pottle snaps pictures for the students’ memory books.

“I’m excited for the feeling that they’re going to get, that they were part of something so big—fresh air, green space, things like that,” says Pottle. 

You might not think of the trees in your town or city as a forest. But from a bird’s-eye view, the thousands of leafy crowns that line our streets, shade our yards, and fill our parks comprise a canopy—one with a unique blend of native and nonnative species growing together under challenging conditions.

As Minnesota’s climate continues to warm, trees in communities will play an increasingly important role. Cities, with their abundance of pavement and steel and lack of vegetation, tend to feel the heat more than surrounding natural areas, a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect. By mid-century, Ramsey County is projected to have 15 to 25 extra days above 90 degrees per year, according to MN CliMAT, the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership’s climate projection tool. By the end of the century, the area could see even larger increases in the number of scorching-hot days.

That’s where trees come in. Trees in communities create shade, reduce overall temperatures, and provide a host of other benefits. Emma Schultz, former project specialist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Urban and Community Forestry Program, provides a list: noise reduction, wildlife habitat, cleaner air, stormwater mitigation. Trees near homes and buildings block wind and sun, reducing heating and cooling bills. They absorb carbon from the air and store it in wood and soil, cutting climate pollution.

But for forests to thrive in towns and cities, communities must counter ecological stressors such as insect pests and disease as well as social injustices that can affect tree distribution and health. Despite their complexities, communities need these forests.

“Trees add beauty to our lives, and they contribute to the structure and form of our urban planning and design,” says Schultz. “A majority of Americans live in urban areas, and research has shown how much green infrastructure can contribute to bettering our lives.”

A Mini Forest in a Capital City. The tree planting event at Pilgrim Baptist Church is the culmination of many months of effort by a broad coalition of partners. Renewing the Countryside, Urban Farm and Garden Alliance, and DNR Forestry collaborated with the church to envision and design the miniature forest adjacent to the church’s existing community garden. Great River Greening, Climate Corps, and Ramsey County Master Gardeners will provide initial maintenance for the forest. The DNR administers the project with funding from the U.S. Forest Service.

The project uses the Miyawaki Method, created by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki in the 1970s. “The idea of the planting method is to restore ecosystems, but to be able to do that in small spaces around where we live and work,” explains Hannah Lewis, grants and projects manager for Minneapolis-based sustainability nonprofit Renewing the Countryside and author of the book Mini-Forest Revolution. The method calls for tilling and amending a site’s degraded, compacted soil, then densely planting diverse native species to quickly establish canopy cover, which helps hold moisture and suppress weeds.

In coming years, Pilgrim Baptist hopes to have a functioning, pocket-sized woodland providing shade, cleaner air, pollinator habitat, educational opportunities, and a peaceful respite for the community—all within an area about the size of five parking spaces.

The State of Minnesota’s Climate Action Framework includes community tree canopy protection and expansion as a priority action for addressing climate change. Lewis feels mini forests can be part of this strategy. “We really need to be thinking ahead about how to boost the resilience of our communities against extreme heat, drought, and flooding,” says Lewis. “And we also need to try to do our tiny part to stem biodiversity loss and draw carbon out of the atmosphere.”

Another benefit of the Pilgrim Baptist project is a chance to restore equity in the area. The church is in the Historic Rondo Community, a majority-Black neighborhood that was devastated by the construction of Interstate 94 in the 1960s and today has some of the lowest canopy coverage in St. Paul, according to American Forests’ Tree Equity Score.

“The current distribution of tree canopy in cities like Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and Rochester correlates strongly with zoning and planning decisions that disenfranchised people of color and low-income people for decades,” says Molly Codding, community environmental justice coordinator for DNR Forestry. Codding points to the negative effects of redlining, a federal policy that contributed to structural racism by denying mortgage loans and other resources to neighborhoods with higher proportions of people of color.

“Redlining was ruled unconstitutional in 1968,” she says, “but the effects of these policies continue to impact communities today.”

“The Pilgrim Baptist planting is not just an ecological project,” says Lewis. “It’s an environmental justice project and a healing project.”

Providing “ReLeaf” to Communities. While urban forests provide many benefits, maintaining them requires constant vigilance against a gauntlet of challenges: air pollution; road salt; impermeable surfaces and soil compaction that crush roots and divert precious water; and the unending march of emerging problems associated with climate change and nonnative pests and disease. Investing in these forests is critical, but communities often don’t have adequate resources to do so.

Fortunately, public recognition of the importance of community forests—and subsequent project funding—is on the rise. The DNR’s Urban and Community Forestry program provides technical, financial, and educational assistance to Minnesota communities to support forest management. Since 2019, the program has distributed more than $25 million in grants to 218 local units of government for tree planning, planting, and care.

One ongoing program, ReLeaf, is empowering communities across the state to create more resilient forests. For example, a ReLeaf grant is funding the planned pruning of more than 3,000 trees on streets and public lands in Rochester. Pruning improves a tree’s structural integrity, growth, and health, making it more resilient to extreme weather, explains Rochester city forester Jeff Haberman. But it needs to be conducted regularly—every seven years according to industry standards. Rochester’s Urban Forest Master Plan calls for a seven-year pruning cycle, but current staffing allows the city to prune only every 20 years.

“The ReLeaf grant funds are going to help us achieve these shorter time frames between pruning,” says Haberman. “We really feel this pruning project is directly related to adapting for climate change.”

The city will also remove dead or dying trees and use other grant funds to replace them. Haberman sees this as another opportunity to prepare Rochester for warmer temperatures by planting some tree species native to more southerly parts of the United States, a climate adaptation strategy known as assisted migration.

“We’re doing everything we can to identify new species to bring further north,” says Haberman, including southeastern Minnesota native trees like shagbark hickory and swamp white oak, and small numbers of trees from beyond our state borders like shingle oak, hardy pecan, Osage orange, and bald cypress. “We’ll try anything once,” he laughs.

Roughly 90 miles to the northwest, Fridley is using ReLeaf dollars to contend with an infestation of emerald ash borer, a nonnative insect that is devastating ash trees throughout central and southern Minnesota. According to the Metropolitan Council’s Growing Shade Tool, tree canopy coverage is lower among Fridley’s lower-income households. So, in addition to chemically treating valuable ash trees on public lands to prevent emerald ash borer damage and planting some trees along a hot, sunny trail frequented by Fridley’s students and older residents, the city will use ReLeaf funds to remove dead or dying ash trees from 100 income-qualified private residences and replace them with a variety of large and small tree species, including hackberry, basswood, blue beech, and serviceberry.

“We’ve been hearing from residents a lot of concern about the financial impact of removing their existing ash trees, and how this large-scale removal of trees is changing the character of their neighborhood,” says Rachel Workin, Fridley’s environmental planner. “Residents want to see trees replaced but don’t always have the financial or physical means. This is our first opportunity to provide support for removal and replacement on private property.”

Program participants will receive a site visit to help them select the right species and planting location and learn about tree care. Workin hopes the program contributes to a more resilient future canopy. “The trees that we selected were chosen for disease resistance, climate adaptation, and the ability to provide benefits to pollinators,” she says.

Unlike Fridley, the northern community of Hibbing—where ash is the most common tree species in town—has yet to be affected by emerald ash borer. However, the insect has been found nearby in the county.  To prepare for future infestation, the city is using its ReLeaf award to inventory its community trees and create a management plan for them, including steps to replace dead or dying trees with a greater diversity of species. Nick Arola, city services director for Hibbing, hopes that investing in planning now will pay dividends for the community.

“We live in the north here for a reason. You want to be close to nature and utilize the outdoors, and we don’t want a city that is completely devastated by emerald ash borer in the future,” he says. “We want to try and get out ahead of this and have a plan in place that we can follow for the next 10 to 15 years.”

Growing Strong Roots. Back at Pilgrim Baptist Church, several dozen community volunteers and staff from the project’s many supporting organizations return the next morning to plant the remaining seedlings for the mini forest.

Nate Galloway, a retired educator who is the facilities manager and community garden coordinator for the church, talks to volunteers about the church’s history. Galloway has strong roots here. His grandfather was once the pastor. He explains how the church was founded by people who had escaped slavery, traveling up the Mississippi River via the Underground Railroad. Pilgrim Baptist has long played an important role as an advocate for the community, and Galloway hopes the new planting project will help the church continue to bring area residents together, especially young people.

“My hope is to sustain that relationship between Maxfield [Elementary] and that garden area,” he says, noting that students can take field trips to the forest to learn about nature and caretaking activities, like weeding and pruning.

After planting, volunteers form relay lines to distribute fresh straw for mulching the area. Young children giggle and toss straw in the air. One child takes long, careful steps through the planted area, tiptoeing around the many seedlings. Watching the joyful scene, it’s easy to imagine the green space a few decades later: parents or grandparents sitting on benches shaded by mature trees, watching a new generation of children weaving around the trunks, throwing leaves, investigating bugs, or eating Juneberries.

As the climate warms and the city evolves, these trees are bound to witness a lot of change. But with time and proper care, they can play a role in making the community where they are rooted a better place to live.