Urban Forestry

Trees have an essential role to play in city planning and urban infrastructure. Discover the benefits of urban forestry with the help of Penn State Extension. Learn about planting and caring for trees and other plants in your town or community.

What is Urban Forestry?

Over 140 million acres of forest in America are located in towns and cities. They are known as urban forests. Trees help filter air and water, control stormwater runoff, help conserve energy, and provide shade and animal habitat.

Urban forests vary in size and location. It’s a term used to describe urban parks, nature preserves, street trees, extensive gardens, or any trees that grow collectively within a suburb, town, or city.

Urban forestry is a term used to refer to the planting, maintenance, care, and protection of these urban forests. Countless opportunities are available for anyone who wants to make urban forestry a career. Positions range from planning for, planting, and maintaining urban trees. Citizens and communities can also get actively involved in the development of urban forests.

Urban Forestry Programs

The benefits of urban forests include managing stormwater, reducing flooding, and improving water quality. Trees in an urban environment can also provide shade, improve aesthetics, and add to municipal sustainability and the health and welfare of its citizens and property.

The benefits of an urban forest are well known, but effective urban forestry programs are sometimes lacking. The reason could be a lack of interest or a lack of someone with the persistence to establish a program.

Citizen advocacy groups can work with community officials to put issues such as developing an urban forest on the local government agenda. Community Forest Ordinances, for example, can be used to establish municipal tree commissions. This is one step a community can take to create and sustain an urban forestry program.

The first step in establishing a tree commission is to create a community tree plan. The key to this plan will be an inventory of existing trees. A community tree map is an essential tool because it can be used to conduct tree inventories, monitor activities, analyze urban tree canopies, and track tree maintenance and stewardship activities.

A community tree plan is like a road map. It will include visions and goals, strategies, tree-planting programs, actions, annual work plans, and budgets. Community tree budgets should provide for tree removals, pruning, and planting.

The plan can identify ways the commission can assist the community, county, and statewide emergency management programs.

Planting Community Trees

Establishing a volunteer project is an excellent place to start if you want to establish a community forest program. But before any community trees are planted, you first have to select the best trees for a given location.

Online training is available from the Tree Tender Program. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, in collaboration with Penn State Extension Urban Foresters, has trained thousands of Tree Tenders in 150 neighborhoods. Publications like the Landscape Tree Factsheets can help you select trees for planting in towns and cities.

You must take various factors into account when deciding what trees to plant. Proper analysis of the planting site means taking into account the characteristics and history of the landscape. The soil may be damaged because of construction. Consideration has to be taken of overhead and underground utility facilities.

Once the trees have been chosen, the long-term success depends on proper planting, establishment, maintenance, and monitoring. Arborist skills play a crucial part in the care and maintenance of urban forests and community trees. When, for example, is the right time to top a tree? There is a right way to prune trees to maintain health and avoid structural defects.

In this section you will find everything that you need to kick-start an urban forestry initiative. Penn State Extension educators have compiled all the necessary information and resources you will need to begin planting and caring for your community trees.