On September 24, the City of Cambridge’s “Daily Update & Information” email included a message from the Department of Public Work’s Forestry Division about the care of street trees.
Street trees benefit us by providing shade and cooling urban heat islands, reducing stormwater runoff, and adding beauty to the urban landscape. Weeding street tree-wells is essential if trees are to take up water and nutrients so they can be their best selves. But with 14,000-plus trees to maintain, the city’s foresters aren’t able to weed every tree well, or even most. Thus, the call to Cantabrigians to pitch in with some tree-well weeding.
As two longtime weeders of orphan street trees, we are writing to back up the city’s plea. By mid-summer, weeds are growing profusely around many of Cambridge’s street trees, especially the younger ones. The author of the Forestry Division email put the problem delicately, but we’ll be blunt: many otherwise beautiful street trees are surrounded by ugly tangles of weeds and trash.
Pick up your weeding tools, garden gloves, and yard-waste bags! We’ve been at it for a dozen years, meeting up early on summer mornings at sites around Cambridge. We can testify that weeding with a friend is fun, a chance to talk, to be outside. Plus, cleaning up a weedy tree well is enormously satisfying.
Here is a set of before-and-after photos from a recent weeding foray on Belmont Street between Holworthy and Cushing. It’s a block that is home to Sofra and Harvard Square Eye Care — and three empty storefronts.
In an hour and a half, we cleaned up three tree wells, two with Callery pear trees and one awaiting a new tree. As always, we left with a feeling of accomplishment, and the day was still young.
We hope that the city will fill the open tree well on Belmont Street this fall and add the lovely flower baskets (like those on some other main streets) to the two established trees in the spring. With better care of the block’s street trees, perhaps new businesses will be encouraged to move in. There is lots of foot traffic on this block. It’s a gateway to Cambridge, and it should look cared for, not neglected.
If more Cantabrigians start caring for wells around the city, Cambridge will be a more beautiful, greener place.
Maggie Booz, Lawn Street, Cambridge
Annette LaMond, Riedesel Avenue, Cambridge
A stronger
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Nice work, gardeners-at-large. It’s a reminder to notice, and to carry a pair of working gloves to be able to stop and weed on the way to somewhere. More mature trees are disappearing by the day so we might support the ones we’ve got. This week a large maple came down on Linnaean from the wind, the brick sidewalk upended at a precarious angle. I’ve been unsure about whether weeds/decorative plantings were taking up the water, thinking that low vegetation around city trees would hold water better in the ground there. Now you just have to find a way to keep dogs from peeing on them.
Thanks so much, Maggie and Annette!
You are doing great work and encouraging others to follow!
Great work Maggie and Annette! We need more citizens to take the initiative to care for their local neighborhood street tree(s).
I purchased two of the metal flower baskets myself last year for a pair of street trees in front of our condo. McCue Garden Center in Woburn is the city’s supplier and will sell to individual customers. The flowers are beautiful, last all season, and when watered regularly help hydrate the tree well. And I have found that most people don’t let their dog urinate on them.