Treez Please gets busy reforesting Youngstown

The group is waiting on approval to plant trees on Euclid Boulevard.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — A group of area environmentalists celebrated what it hopes to be the first of many efforts to reforest the city.

Treez Please, which Youngstown attorney Debra Weaver formed in the spring, had a gathering Saturday at the corner of Broadway and Kensington Avenue on the North Side to show what $1,000, donated labor and a lot of donated materials can produce.

The group acquired two vacant city lots — named Common Ground — and planted about two dozen trees on them over the past five weeks.

Work is progressing on a central meadow where flowers and grasses will be planted to demonstrate the value of such plant life for birds and pollinators.

“Trees are wonderful because they make the city more livable, decrease the heat in summer, absorb sound, provide a habitat for squirrels and birds, and absorb carbon monoxide that leads to global warming,” said Ralph Malmer of Austintown, one of the group’s vice presidents.

Malmer and fellow vice president Frank Bishop of Poland, members of the same Youngstown church, said they sat down this summer to think of ways they could have a positive impact on global warming and hit upon the idea of planting trees in the city.

They soon realized the city had a group, Treez Please, that had formed just a few months before that with the same goal. The two groups joined forces.

One of the first accomplishments was to acquire the Common Ground property, then another property at the corner of Fairgreen and Ohio avenues. Next the group approached David Sturtz, the city’s forester, to seek permission to plant trees in the devil strip of one of the eight neighborhoods identified in the city’s 2010 plan: Euclid Boulevard on the South Side.

If the city approves Treez Please’s application, the group will go to work on the center island on the first block of Euclid Boulevard just south of Midlothian Boulevard. The Boulevard Park Neighborhood Association already has donated $600 toward the Treez Please project.

Bishop says the Common Ground and Euclid Boulevard projects are a way to show the city what the group can do.

“Our main goal is to put in thousands of trees in the devil strips and vacant lots” of the city, Bishop said, noting that there are 1,000 miles of devils strips in the city. A devil strip is a section of lawn between the street and the sidewalk.

Bishop said the group, which numbers about 80 people, hopes that local contributors and trusts such as the Raymond Wean Foundation will help fund the group’s volunteer work.

Weaver says her main reason for forming Treez Please was to help the city carry out its 2010 goals, which include eliminating blight by demolishing abandoned houses.

The problem with taking down vacant houses, she noted, is that it leaves a lot of grass to cut. Planting trees reduces the amount of grass that needs to be cut, and provides significant environmental benefits, she said.

The group has attracted the attention of young people who want to see the city progress, Weaver said, such as Tyler Clark of the North Side, who writes the blog Youngstown Renaissance.

Clark, who moved to Youngstown in February after living in other parts of the country for several years, said it was enjoyable to bring his wife and two small children to Common Ground to help clean up trash and weeds and help give new life to the neighborhood several blocks from his Fifth Avenue home.

“We’ve always believed in the city,” said Clark.

runyan@vindy.com