Free to a good home! Conifers await West Seattle ‘adoptions’

| Environment | West Seattle news

Once upon a time, not that long ago, evergreen forest blanketed our peninsula. Now, aside from green havens such as the West Duwamish Greenbelt, Schmitz Park, Lincoln Park, etc., it’s a tree here, a tree there. But if you have room for a conifer – or more than one – the city can match you up with trees looking for good homes. It’s part of the Trees for Neighborhoods program we mentioned recently; Katie Gibbons contacted WSB again today to say, “We’re down to two tree species and we’d love it if more West Seattle folks adopted some conifers. Currently, we have Austrian pine and Oriental spruce available. Both are large conifers reaching an approximate height of 40’ and a spread of 25’ at maturity. We recommend that these trees be planted in yards as they do get quite large and are usually not appropriate as street trees.” The two species they have are the Austrian Pine (left) and the Oriental Spruce. Interested? Free trees, watering bags, planting/maintenance training, and more are offered by Trees for Neighborhoods – go here to apply, and/or send questions to treesforneighborhoods@seattle.gov.

sophista-tiki August 15, 2013 (4:21 pm)

I’d love to see the city replant the corner of 24th ave SW and Henderson/Barton. This corner was clear cut of 14 mature urban evergreen trees about 5 yrs ago ( maybe 6) whenever it was, it happend 3 days before it became manditory to get a permit to cut more than 3 trees. The condo complex (who monoplizes the block and thinks no one else lives here) stated that the reason for cutting all the tees was that the pine needles were clogging the gutters on their carports. (I call Bullshit) Facts about the anual value of those trees can be found on the city website about retreeing the city. With an anual value of $60,00 each it would cost far less to just clean the gutters. Those trees provided much needed privacy and noise polution reduction from mall traffic. It gave more of a sense of privacy for this increasingly busy area. Now it looks like crap,we might as well all be living in the middle of the parking lot at the mall. I’ve tried on many ocassions to rally the neighbors to do something about replanting. On the outside of the condo property fence is an extremely large strip of grass suitable for planting new trees.

Kathy Hayes August 15, 2013 (6:17 pm)

I agree with sophista-tiki. Brilliant idea!! Make it so!

lml August 16, 2013 (7:34 am)

sophistka-tiki: I have many volunteers in my yard that I don’t have the heart to pull up. Evergreens and some good looking leafy trees that will be good for that area for you. Ill take photos if you like – but I’m not the one to do the work, someone else can dig them up and they are yours if you like.

ToniR August 16, 2013 (8:48 am)

Why is the city providing non-native trees when we have so many great Northwest natives?

EMO August 16, 2013 (1:34 pm)

Great point ToniR, my thoughts exactly!

girliehammer August 16, 2013 (5:11 pm)

They’re probably just the species that were readily available. Why is there always someone willing to bring on the negativity? Classic Seattle.

EMO August 16, 2013 (8:29 pm)

Nothing to do with negativity, girliehammer, simply pointing out another classic case of not thinking something through. If they are readily available, fine, but do not distribute another non-native species to the masses when ivy, Himalayan blackberry, Herb Robert and conifers for example are running over native species. Something is also to be said about others who point out cases of supposed negativity, classic as well.

WSB August 16, 2013 (8:52 pm)

This is an official city program that I would hope has also involved urban foresters and other experts – hoping that those who have a concern are feeding it back to them directly (see the e-mail address in the story). As for non-native species, while no expert, I certainly am aware of the problem with blackberries, ivy, etc., and have been pulling them on our tiny patch of land for 20 years. The city does note that non-native and native species could be combined “to plant the right tree in the right place,” see this report –
.
http://www.seattle.gov/urbanforestrycommission/docs/Archive/2012/2012%20docs/DRAFT%20iTree%20Seattle%20Public%20Report%20071812.pdf
.
perhaps a recognition of the fact that there are few places inside the city where you could plant a native conifer that might get to triple-digit height but run into the infrastructure? Power lines, etc. Of course it would be great to get the infrastructure underground, but we don’t seem to have the funding or will for that right now.
.
Last but not least regarding negativity … the word might be “criticism.” I don’t know if it’s the zeitgeist but lately it seems that we could for example write about some act of Good Samaritanism and even it would draw criticism rather than praise, nitpicking one particular point of it (maybe the Good Samaritan was seen in a photo wearing sweatshop-made clothing, for example), and I would just love to see some people point out the cup-half-full aspects as well as the cup-half-empty aspects. Trying to walk that talk myself. In this case, if you can tell me the specific species mentioned are really harmful, then I stand educated. I have something of a naive view, perhaps, that just about any tree has to be better than a square of lawn. We have allowed some greenery on our little lot that might not be approved of, but that is appreciated by the birds and the bees and there has to be some value in that … Tracy