1 Tree Up, 999 To Go

Tree planters trudged through the mud at Kimberly Field to position a red oak in the ground — and pledged to plant 1,000 new trees in New Haven a year, one sapling at a time.

Members of the Urban Resource Initiative (URI) joined city leaders at the field Monday morning to kick off a nearly $3 million program to double the number of trees planted across the city over the next five years.

The money — $2.6 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — will bring 500 trees each year for five years to New Haven neighborhoods in need of more shade and green space. URI already plants 500 trees a year across the city as requested by residents. This money promises to double that total amount while prioritizing schools, parks and streets in areas targeted for ​“environmental justice” development.

That includes places like Dixwell, Newhallville, and, as witnessed Monday, the Hill. 

Read about that grant in detail here.

“Neighborhoods like the Hill can get 20 degrees hotter than others,” URI Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning said, because of a lack of trees to provide the kind of protection from the elements offered in spots like East Rock. ​“We’re planting in our neighborhoods that need it the most.”

This week, 30 trees, largely evergreens, will pop up around Kimberly Field. The first to go in Monday was a red oak. There are also red cedars, elms, pines, and arborvitae on the way.

The trees will become elements of infrastructure in a park already poised for reconstruction.

The muddy and messy Kimberly Field, located at 150 Kimberly Ave. right next to Betsy Ross Magnet School, is set to receive a resurfaced basketball court, new water line and fountain, improved dug-outs and a new baseball infield, and a cricket pitch by this time next year. (Read more about that here.)

“So many members of the community walk our parking lot for exercise,” Betsy Ross Principal Jennifer Jenkins said. The pending changes to the fields will not only create a shaded sports zone for students, but create an amenity intended but failing to serve the broader community. 

The trees surrounding that renovated field were selected by URI’s Chris Ozyck. He said the evergreens will offer colorful and textured year-round screening from the soon-to-be bustling fields for neighbors, provide homes for native birds in a ​“critical flyway close to the harbor,” and generate a general sense of ​“vitality.”

While URI typically plants trees in places where residents have agreed to tend to them, Ozyck said that the department of public works is set to care for all trees funded by the grant going into public parks. And outreach will be undertaken in targeted neighborhoods to encourage more people who might not jump on that opportunity to take on a tree in their yard, on their street, or at their child’s school.

“We want to help them [the people] understand them [the trees],” he said. ​“But we’re not gonna put a tree in someone’s house who doesn’t want it.”