Laura Glesby Photo
A shingle oak with star-like leaves was planted Friday just feet from the Quinnipiac River — marking a milestone in New Haven’s ongoing efforts to make the Elm City a tree city once more with deeply connected grass roots.
Volunteers, city officials, and employees gathered in the park on Friday morning to celebrate the planting of the 10,000th tree by a community-connected nonprofit called Urban Resources Initiative.
Friday’s tree was sponsored by the Friends of Quinnipiac Park, a Fair Haven community group that takes care of several other URI-planted trees in the green space.
Over the course of the morning, volunteers took turns digging a semi-sphere in the park soil with shovels and pickaxes. When the hole was ready, the group tipped the fledgling tree into the ground. They unwrapped the root ball, raked dirt back around the tree, poured gallons of water around the trunk, and coated the final layer of dirt with woodchips.
As the new tree took root, 40 New Haveners remembered other recently-planted trees still thriving in parks and on sidewalks: trees in honor of lost daughters, trees commemorating second chances, trees introducing kids and newcomers to Connecticut soil.
Celeste Robinson.
As Celeste Robinson Fulcher poured a massive bucket of water over the shingle oak’s roots, she thought of the two trees planted in honor of her daughter, Erika Robinson, an aspiring local fashion designer who was murdered at age 26.
Robinson Fulcher planted one of those trees on Cherry Ann Street on Erika’s birthday. Just showing up that morning “was really hard for me,” she recalled.
Working with young volunteers to plant the tree brought her joy in the midst of her grief. “I loved the enthusiasm from the kids,” Robinson Fulcher said. She planted another tree in memory of Erika across from her church on Goffe Street.
A year ago, Robinson Fulcher added a groundswell of other plants to those trees: alongside other grieving mothers, she worked with URI to create a vibrant Botanical Garden of Healing memorializing New Haveners who died by gun violence.
East Rock resident Kevin McCarthy’s first volunteering experience with URI was 20 years ago, planting a street tree on his Bradley Street block. He recalled whacking at the concrete sidewalk with a sledgehammer in order to make room for the tree. “It does bring neighbors together,” he said. “If you are digging a big hole, you do get to talk to people.”
Community-Building Mission
URI, an organization under Yale’s School of the Environment, started in New Haven in 1991. The organization works with local teens, Yale interns, people transitioning out of prison through EMERGE Connecticut, and other community stewards to plant trees and install water-filtering bioswales throughout the city’s parks, schoolyards, and streets. Residents are able to request a free tree from the organization as long as they pledge to care for it.
New Haven has 3,200 “tree adopters,” according to Colleen Murphy-Dunning, URI’s director, who ran Friday’s program with an unwavering smile.
The organization aims to tackle large-scale environmental challenges on a hyper-local level, tree by tree. As two-year intern and local climate organizer Adrian Huq noted, “Deforestation, right after fossil fuels, is a top contributor of greenhouse gases.”
URI’s tree-planting mission is also an effort toward environmental justice. Nationally, low-income and majority Black and Brown neighborhoods have disproportionately fewer trees, which can be a source of clean air, temperature control, and beauty.
URI Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning.
Opportunity EMERGEs
Rich Watkins.
Through its partnership with EMERGE, URI also provides job opportunities to men transitioning out of incarceration, many of whom are from New Haven. URI was the first organization to partner with EMERGE, which now works with a number of organizations across the state. According to EMERGE executive director Alden Woodcock, over 100 formerly incarcerated people have worked at URI, planting 3,000 trees — more than any other partner organization.
“It’s completely changed the landscape of the city,” Woodcock said of the partnership
Rich Watkins, a personal development coordinator at EMERGE who once worked in the organization’s tree-planting program himself, remembers planting a number of trees by the highway near Yale. “After we was done, it had already changed the whole area,” Watkins said. He takes pride in returning to the trees he’s planted, knowing his own impact on his city.
Xochitl Garcia, who runs a URI program for high schoolers, thought back to an experience pulling weeds from a West River area with a group of teens. Time moved faster when the group turned the task into a game, using friendly competition to find meaning in the mundane task.
Matt Viens.
Matt Viens pointed out a handful of trees in the very park where everyone had gathered on Friday that he’d helped to plant during his time affiliated with URI. A tree he’ll always remember is located in Pardee Seawall Park, a tree he planted when he visited New Haven for the first time as an admitted student at the Yale School of the Environment.
Justin Elicker gets to work.
Mayor Justin Elicker remembered first getting to know the city he now leads by tending to trees through the Friends of East Rock Park. “I started getting involved in New Haven through URI,” he said.
Fair Haven activist Lee Cruz recalled his son Pablo’s first time planting a tree on East Pearl Street at about 5 years old. Pablo kept asking questions of the Yale intern working with them, Cruz recalled; he learned about how trees get their nutrients, and about the human labor involved in nurturing plants throughout the city.
As URI’s associate director and local environmental activist Chris Ozyck told Friday’s celebrators and volunteers, “Cities are a reflection of how much people care.” The tree that made its way into the Quinnipiac River Park soil culminated 10,000 acts of care springing from every corner of the city.
How about a tree tax!!!!! Those trees take a lot of services!!!!/////////