TREES FOR OAKLAND

We have reached the finish line!
Our grant officially expired on December 19, 2019, but we were able to buy some trees before the deadline, continue planting them in the subsequent weeks, and then compile our final list. We went out with a bang on January 18, 2020, planting 51 more trees in a third round on Railroad Avenue in East Oakland. (The first two were on October 26 and November 2, 2019.)
Our final tally: 1,475 trees planted! Most of them are large-stature species that will grow up to provide shade, cleaner air, and carbon sequestration in the neighborhoods that need them the most.
Now we are wrapping up the recordkeeping to close out the grant, and we have not scheduled any volunteer tree-planting events in February or March. (The calendar below is empty, we know.)
In the meantime, if you have time and energy to volunteer, please consider helping our friends at the Sierra Club Tree Team, or a park around town (OPRF has a list of parks at this page), or one of the Bay Area's other tree-planting organizations.

Calendar of Events
Check out our calendar for opportunities to help Oakland:

Older headlines:

We have passed the 1,400-tree mark!
On Saturday, December 14, 2019, our volunteers planted 12 trees at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Park, continuing a successful year-long partnership with the East Bay Regional Parks District (EBRPD).   One of these trees was our 1,400th tree funded by the CalFire grant. Thanks again to the staff at EBRPD for inviting us to plant even more trees at this park.

We have passed the 1,200- and 1,300-tree marks, and broke our most-in-a-day record!
On Saturday, November 23, 2019, our volunteers planted 65 trees and broke our previous record of 57 trees planted in one day. Sixty-four of the trees are around the former Pacific Pipe facility in West Oakland, and 1 more is at a house.   One of the 64 trees was our 1,300th tree funded by the CalFire grant. Thanks again to the team at 11 West Properties for being so supportive of new trees, for coordinating this project with us, and for getting their staff to do most of the digging in advance.
We planted our 1,200th tree funded by the CalFire grant on Saturday, October 26. It was one of the 45 London plane trees planted along Railroad Avenue in partnership with Alameda County's experimental project to discourage illegal dumping in East Oakland.

Our Fall 2019 planting season has begun!
We held our first public planting event of the season on the morning of Saturday, October 19.   With a total of 15 planters, we planted 14 trees at 9 houses around town. We planted again on October 26, helping Alameda County and several partners plant 45 trees along Railroad Avenue in a pilot-project to discourage illegal dumping.
We are continuing to work on a few dozen open tree-requests, along with a few bigger projects.
We accepted new applications throughout October, but we are not accepting any more because we need time to resolve all open requests before our grant funding expires in December. If you want to request a tree now, please contact us so we can refer you to another program.

The 2018-'19 planting season is over!
Our planting season began on Saturday, December 1, 2018, and our final event of the season was on Saturday, July 13, 2019.
We planted 466 trees this season, beating our previous season record of 453 trees. Last season our total was 230, from December 2017 to July 2018. Several big projects this season made us a lot more efficient.

We have passed the 1,100-tree mark!
We planted our 1,000th tree funded by the CalFire grant on Saturday, April 6, 2019. Since a few small crews were planting trees for homeowners around town at the same time that morning, we're not sure exactly which tree was #1,000.
Several weeks later, we planted our 1,100th tree on Thursday, May 23, 2019.

We planted 57 trees in one day -- our biggest day ever!
On Saturday, February 23, 2019, we planted 57 trees at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline, part of the East Bay Regional Parks District. Together with more than 30 volunteers from Oakland and other Bay Area cities, we spent a productive morning planting, watering, and staking these trees. Twenty-eight are coast live oaks (Oakland's namesake tree), twenty-six are Catalina ironwoods, and three are Fremont cottonwoods. If you go to the Garretson Point Staging Area and walk/hike/bike along the trails, you will see the new trees. Say hello and wish them well!
At three other events in March 2019 (3/02, 3/23, and 3/31), we planted 57 more trees around the park, for a total of 114.
Thanks again to the staff at East Bay Regional Parks District for coordinating this project with us.

We were the "Nonprofit of the Month" at Oaklandish!
Trees for Oakland is honored to have been named the Oaklandish Nonprofit of the Month for November 2018.
Oaklandish generously donated 10% of all sales throughout November to customers who used the special code TREESXOAK18.

City Council restores funding for a tree crew! (2017)

Brief Background:
Oakland City Council cut the 2009-'11 budget for the Tree Services Division (a part of Public Works) because of the recession.
Tree Services laid off half of their employees, including 2 of their 3 work crews. They stopped pruning trees and stopped planting trees.
This situation inspired the founding of a new volunteer tree-planting program that later came to be called the Sierra Club Tree Team (or SCTT), which in turn gave rise to this program (Trees for Oakland, a project of the Oakland Parks & Recreation Foundation (OPRF)).

With the recession behind us, the Oakland Urban Forestry Forum and a coalition of community groups in Oakland have urged the City Council to do these 3 things:

restore funding for the Tree Services Division (part of Public Works) to at least the 2007 level of 30 employees;
fund an Urban Forestry Management Plan;
establish an Urban Forestry Commission or Task Force.

Read the full document here (click for 2-page PDF).

As of July 1, the City Council approved the next 2-year budget, for Fiscal Years 2017-'18 and 2018-'19.
It includes a restored 5-person crew (4 tree trimmers and 1 supervisor) for tree maintenance, under the Alameda County Measure BB sales tax for transportation projects.