Concrete Cleared For Roots To Grow

William Tisdale and the rest of his team hauled concrete slabs onto their work truck, opening a rectangle of ground wide enough for a 300-pound hawthorn sapling.

On a street without many trees, they found space between the curb and the sidewalk to make room for new life to grow.

The scene took place on Monday afternoon on Hallock Street, near Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy in the Hill.

The street has a few large trees at either end of the block — and almost none in between. It’s a particularly barren block in one of New Haven’s least tree-covered neighborhoods, according to the Urban Resources Initiative (URI), the nonprofit that runs the city’s tree-planting program.

“The reason it’s so powerful to cut new pits is that there aren’t that many. There are a lot of houses where there is space, but no tree pit,” said URI’s GreenSkills Program Manager Caroline Scanlan.

Scanlan explained that the lack of shade on the street (pictured above) matters as heat waves get longer, hotter and more deadly with climate change.

And histories of housing segregation and disinvestment in non-white neighborhoods have left a clear stamp both in New Haven and nationwide. A recent study found that these neighborhoods can be 20 degrees hotter than the historically white neighborhoods deemed ​“safe” for investment under redlining. New Haven’s redlined neighborhoods were on average 6.3 degrees hotter, according to the study.

Hallock Street was just slightly safer for investment than redlined neighborhoods but ​“definitely declining,” according to a 1937 federal investment map. Today, it has less than half of the tree canopy of the ​“best” investment streets in Prospect Hill.

Scanlan manages a program at URI that pulls together high school and college students and adults reentering the workforce after incarceration to plant trees wherever New Haveners request them.

Many of those who request trees are renters, like Shenika Patterson (pictured above).

Patterson heard about URI’s free tree program through a friend who works at Habitat for Humanity. She called to set up an appointment because she thought it would be a nice addition to the sidewalk in front of her Hallock Street home, she said.

Patterson grew up in Florida surrounded by trees. After moving to New Haven in 1989, she started to recreate that greenery around her. She keeps potted palm trees in her front yard during the summer and tends to zucchini, squash, tomatoes and onions in a garden hidden behind her house.

On Monday, the palm trees were sheltering indoors, but Patterson was outside watching the planting happen. After requesting the tree, Patterson promised to take care of it until its roots grow deep enough to reach groundwater. This means watering it once a week for three years, Scanlan said.

Patterson also provided the water for the hawthorn’s first drink once planted. Scanlan (pictured above) filled five buckets with water from a hose connected to Patterson’s house for the hawthorn’s first drink once planted.

As Scanlan lugged the buckets out of Patterson’s yard, she said that URI is on track to plant 300 trees this fall, just nine short of URI’s goal. Given the Covid-19 pandemic, that is pretty good, Scanlan said.

The city reimburses URI about $450 per tree for roughly 550 plantings per year. The cost goes up and the number of trees in the goal goes down when the GreenSkills workers have to break up sidewalk, as they did on Monday. But the cost is worth it to bring a new tree to a street without much shade, and URI wants to focus more on this scenario, Scanlan said.

There was already a small tree pit in front of Patterson’s home when she called URI. The pit just wasn’t large enough for URI’s standards of what would give the tree a chance to thrive.

The team broke up the sidewalk around the pit in advance and removed the extra chunks of concrete on the day of the planting.

As the team dug a hole for the hawthorn’s roots, they encountered the buried stump of a long-dead tree. URI Field Crew Representative William Tisdale (pictured above) hacked at the white, withered roots. Then he handed the task over to a member of his crew, Jonathan Geneste.

Geneste (pictured above) launched all of his body weight into each whack of his pickaxe as he tried to break up the roots. One strike dug so deep into the soil that it nearly toppled the man himself.

As other crew members collected the pieces of desiccated wood, Geneste estimated that he has found stumps in tree pits around 10 percent of the time.

“We run into them a lot. We can usually reposition or can get it out easily. I guess this is not one of those times,” he said.

Geneste has become a veteran on the GreenSkills crew since early summer. He works for EMERGE Connecticut, a nonprofit that helps ex-offenders transition into jobs or further education. He has worked on construction, demolition and painting projects. Of all these options, his favorite job is helping URI build bioswales. The trenches of gravel and soil, topped with what looks like a mini garden, help filter rainwater to prevent flooding.

“It looks nice and it’s helpful,” he explained.

Geneste gestured over his shoulder in the direction of the post office at the corner of Hallock Street and Washington Avenue. Three weeks ago, he helped dig and fill the two bioswales there, he recalled.

Hole cleared, Tisdale measured whether it was deep enough for the tree. Then EMERGE crew member Ra Hashim rolled the 300-pound tree into its new home as Tisdale steered the trunk.

Scanlan noticed a broken branch at the top; EMERGE member Steve Neary clipped it off before the crew finished stabilizing the trunk.

Geneste and Hashim (pictured above) cut away the string and wire encircling the tree’s roots. The hawthorn had been growing in Buffalo, NY prior to October. Then it was cut off from 70 percent of its roots and shipped to New Haven, where URI has been caring for it.

“It’s definitely happy to be in the ground,” Scanlan said.

The crew filled in the hole with top soil and molded a donut around the tree. As they poured the buckets of water out at the base of the tree, the ring kept the pool of water from spilling past the tree pit. Hashim poked at the soil underneath the pool until the water started to drain down.

Yale intern Lloyd Farley drove stakes into the ground on either side of the hawthorn. URI is affiliated with the Yale School of the Environment and Farley joined from that program.

Finally, Tisdale tied arbor tape to each stake to help the sapling stay steady as its roots grow into the ground. Other team members raked and swept up the dirt around the tree.

Then suddenly, the crew jumped into trucks and sped off to their next location in the Hill, Frank Street. Scanlan explained that they were on a time crunch to finish the planting before dark, and the Frank Street tree was more challenging. The team had to haul away concrete to create an entirely new pit, to add shade to another street with few other trees.

On Hallock Street, the hawthorn stood quietly next to two crab apple saplings. All are part of the cherry tree family and had small, red berries decorating their slender branches. Except for the wet patch on the sidewalk where the buckets had overflowed, it was hard to tell that the last in the line was a newcomer.

To request a tree from URI, call 203 – 432-6189, email [email protected], or visit this website.