Ep. 247 Planting with Purpose: Tree Equity and Our Communities | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Galesburg, Illinois. And we have got a great show for you today and all this month because it is April now, which means it's Arbor month. We're talking trees every single week this month. And you know I'm not doing this by myself.

I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. So I was inspired by last week's episode, and I went out and bought a Chicago hardy fig tree shrub. Mhmm. So it's not in the ground yet, but maybe someday I'll have figs.

Call me when you do because I like I said last week, I've never eaten a fig before in my life. And so I am I look forward to that day where I can eat figs full of dead wasps, which if you listen to last week's episode, you know it's not true, least here in Illinois. So far. Yet. So far.

Ken's working on bringing those wasps to this part of the world. Well, Ken, I don't think we can talk trees without bringing on horticulture educator Emily Swihart in Milan or Milan, Illinois. Emily, welcome to the show.

Hi, guys. I Chris, you probably could talk trees without me, but it would make me sad. And so I appreciate being included.

Yes. Well, I mean, you're you have to be here when we talk trees. That's just the rule now. I'm pretty sure, yep, it's it's on the list. Talking trees, Emily has to be there.

That's the rule. Yep.

I'm glad I got through all the approval processes.

It went through a lot of red tape. Yep. I had to grease some palms even, but you made it. Yes. Worth

it. Great. Thanks. Mhmm.

It's in your new contract.

That's right. So that so it says other duties as assigned and underneath all tree podcasts.

I'll sign it. I won't even read the rest of it. I'll sign it. Excellent. No.

I'm really excited. So it is April, which is hard to believe. This year went it is going quite fast in my world. But, yeah, April is Arbor month, and so we've talked about it before. Trees just being the higher the higher, you know what do you call this?

Higher plant

The higher plant form.

Mhmm. Form.

Yes.

Yes. We need

a form of plant life. Yes.

Yes. Indeed. We need a shirt with that. But yeah. So I appreciate the opportunity.

We'll we'll talk about trees in a lot of different aspects, like, from different perspectives. So today, we'll talk about a topic that I appreciate bringing to the masses, which is tree equity. It's a term that I don't know that is I I learned of it a couple years ago, gained a lot of traction. There's some resources available to folks now. It really is a tool that we can use to help inform decisions in addition to, you know, some of the other tools that we have available and have had available to us, you know, like tree diversity, like inventories and whatnot.

This adds like a layer that I think is really useful, interesting and useful.

Yeah. And I think the idea of of having sort of this this view of trees as how they are distributed across a community, people got to make a decision about where to plant those trees. And of course, when you talk trees, they cost money, labor, maintenance, all that stuff. And it's not everybody gets necessarily their their what we call the fair share of the pie in that circumstance. So

And as, you know, like, spoiler alert, I guess, like, the those decisions have really long lasting impacts beyond some of our other plant choices. You know, they're really an investment in our community long long term, like decades. And so it could really have a long lasting generational impact. Before we dive into that, though, I you know, kicking off April, Arbor month, I guess I thought we should just, like, kind of refresh everyone. It's like, what are the benefits of trees?

Like, just a reminder, we we we don't have to go into any great detail. But there are a number of really beneficial applications for trees in our community. And I I my background, before coming to Extension, I worked with a lot of small, like, municipal entities. We were trying to plant trees through volunteer work primarily, but it was in partnership with elected officials, land managers, you know, residents. Sometimes those are all the same people in small towns and villages.

And so what I learned from that time was really that people come to the table with different perspectives as to, like, why we would want or are having a hard time getting on board with planting trees. There's kinda like those two sides of the coin. And it's just because they have different perspectives. And I found that when we engaged in conversation and we really talked about trees through the lens that they needed to see them through, it helped move the needle. So I guess I if we could take just a few minutes, just to refresh our course on what the different benefits of trees are so that hopefully this month, the people wanna advocate for tree planting in their communities or talk to their neighbors or, you know, family and friends about planting trees and you get some pushback, like, you might have a little bit more in your arsenal of of comebacks, you know, to to address their concerns because they're they're valid.

We can just engage, though. So you good with that? I'm gonna go anyways if you say yes or no.

Let's let's dive into the benefits of trees. Yes.

Okay. Well, okay. So there's the environmental. Right? Would does one of you wanna take that?

Just, like, talk about some of the environmental aspects of trees in our communities.

Well, I have a few things to say about that, but I'm curious what Ken thinks.

Yeah.

Sorry, Ken. Oh.

So there's the we'll we'll talk about the bugs. There's the keystone species. Celad trees are keystone species. They support a lot of other wildlife. It's like oak trees, you know, support hundreds of different species of of butterflies and moths and so which depending on who you're trying to convince, this may not be much of a selling point that you're gonna have more PB crawlies potentially in the landscape.

But they're supporting other wildlife. You know, you've got the oxygen production, you know, carbon dioxide or carbon sequestration, all that water infiltration, a variety of different things that they do environmentally for us.

Yeah. And I'm so happy you're here, Ken, because I of course, we have to think about our oaks and the the insects supported by by our our oaks as one of the keystone trees out there. And many other species of trees support many insects. So, yes, we I'm sorry. Everyone listening, we were giving or Ken was giving us a hard time.

Maybe he's like, what am I gonna say? Glad you're here, Ken.

Yes. Thanks for hanging in there. You can we can have pollinator month and do pollinators and make make us listen to

all of

of them. Yep. Mhmm. Well, you know, Ken, like, you nailed it. Like, there's all these environmental benefits.

Right? Like, especially, like, pollinators and and wildlife beyond pollinators. Like, you talk about oaks being a keystone species for the ecosystem. Well, like, they're supporting keystone food sources. Right?

Like, pollinators, you know, especially those caterpillars are feeding so many different levels of wildlife, like songbirds. We love seeing songbirds. You know, to raise a clutch of chickadees, it's what, like, 900 plus caterpillars. Like, that's an that's there's a lot of value there. The oxygen production, lowering temperatures through shade, storm water management, infiltration, transpiration, you know, making that that water go up and out of the soil versus having to manage it kind of in our our landscapes as a municipality.

I will often so, like, those benefits, you can quantify a number of them, and there are tools available to to actually, like, quantify the value of the trees from, like, a utility standpoint. And I talk about trees in a lot of my programs as pieces of infrastructure. And so, like, stormwater management is one of those ways that they help offset some of the costs that cities would incur from just natural processes. Know, shade and wind wind disruption, so you can have, like, cooling costs or heating costs depending on the season. A lot of reasons environmentally to have trees.

Chris, do you wanna talk about social emotional benefits of trees? Do you feel comfortable with that? I know. I'm like totally putting you guys on the spot here, and I'm sorry. But I feel like I'm gonna ramble a lot in here in a few minutes, and so wanted to bring

you I'm very emotionally comfortable talking about trees. Socially, I'm very awkward when it comes to talking to humans about, well, plants in general. But yes, I when it comes to some of those the the social emotional support nature, we all know that being outdoors, being outside with the sun on us or or in and amongst living plants and and other wildlife and creatures, it's good for us. It's all good for us. And we can kind of just as an instinct say that, but instinct doesn't really carry over when people are making policy decisions because as as we said, you have to convince people to make these decisions, to spend this money.

And so there has been research then conducted that can kind of back up this instinct that we have that being outside is good. So we know that when people are exposed to a view out of a park after a major surgery, they tend to heal slightly faster and they request fewer pain medications. That was a study down at the University of Atlanta or University of Georgia. And there was another study done up in the Chicagoland area where they looked at housing projects and they saw that young girls in these low income areas when they compared high school graduation rates, they started to see an increase in that. They started to see sort of an increase in the in in that female side of that social connection with family, being involved in the community.

They didn't see that with the boys, though, because they figured because they kind of maybe concluded that because boys, they they wander a lot. At least when they did this study, I think this was, like, early two thousands, maybe late nineties. You know, we didn't all have our smartphones. So we were wandering. And so it didn't seem to have much of an effect on males.

So the and so we can see this and that even kids that are taking tests, they will go and they will have a view either outside of a natural space. They've even just tested the color green and they can test their stress levels in their brain and they can see that just being exposed to nature lowers your stress levels even when you're taking a test. And then I think maybe the final thing I'll look at is that when they looked at children diagnosed with ADHD, those that had a particular amount of time where they were exposed to the outdoor setting actually had better control of their ADHD symptoms than those that were not taken outside. And so I don't think it was a permanent solution for them. It was definitely a one of those, like, it helped their brain sort of just relieve that those symptoms.

So, yeah. Now I'm rambling. I'm sorry. Back to you.

No. That's great. Yeah. There's, you know, there's emerging evidence, and then we're starting to have replicated studies to confirm, you know, or confirm some of those findings and expand on them and expand our understanding of how trees benefit us socially, emotionally, mentally, physically, you know, kind of like a whole supporting a whole person and having trees and and being close to trees, like in our neighborhoods, you know, where we're spending most of our time doing most of our activities, interacting with nature. And, you know, oftentimes, that's the only place we're accessing nature, especially in highly developed areas.

The trees of the urban forest, the ones that we are choosing to put into our landscape and managing and choosing to manage hopefully well, but we'll see that that's not always the case, like, affect more than just having trees in our our landscape. It's a there's environmental benefits. There's human benefits. And so you know, keeping that in mind as you drive around your community, as you hopefully advocate for trees, as you plant trees and engage in planting events this spring. I guess, recognize the amazing work you're doing to provide that those benefits to your neighbors and share that knowledge to try to invite others to do it.

Because we are losing urban forest. Like, even though we're we're there's a gaining attention and we're doing more to try to plant trees, like, we're still we're still gaining or we're still losing ground. And that's because a lot of different reasons. But it's really not a one to one ratio. Like, you take out a tree, you plant a tree.

And so I guess I just think we need to ramp up our planting efforts. And whatever we can do to help people get on board with that and support the investment that that is, the better. So thank you, guys.

Mhmm.

Let's shift now because we're talking about all of this. I teased at the beginning, we were gonna talk about tree equity. And this is a subject that pulls on my heartstrings, and so I guess I appreciate being able to talk about it, because not everybody has access to all those benefits. Like, that's why I wanted to to go back and kinda just, like, remind ourselves of the benefits of having trees because if you don't have trees like, we just talked about it as having, like at least in my mind, I went to this place of having these really big majestic trees in our landscape. Right?

Like, that's the that's the landscape I'm envisioning for our community. But the reality is we don't necessarily have that in all of our communities, or we're not maintaining it, or it was never there in the first place. And that's where, like, the the idea of tree equity comes into the conversation. So I mean, let's just talk go ahead.

Yeah. Let me just throw in there too. Yeah. You You know, we are talking about neighborhoods where this is not something that's part of the development process that we also see a lot of. This greenfield development where they come in and they bulldoze all the the trees away, and then they put up these houses that are treeless root.

I feel like we're talking more about neighborhoods where they've been there for a long time and the trees are just never there to begin with. They never left because they were never there. And so, yeah, I think that's kind of what this focus is going to be on.

Yeah. So tree equity is kind of a modern term, and you're right. It's looking at what is like, what is there now kind of because of historical activities. And so it starts really okay. So tree equity is the idea that our neighborhoods, that people in all of the neighborhoods in our communities as a whole have equal access to canopy cover, to the urban forest.

Like, we we are there are mature trees and green spaces in all of these in all of our communities, regardless of socioeconomic status, regardless of, you know, kind of all of the factors. Like, everybody deserves access to trees and a well maintained urban landscape. Now, we know that this is you know, equitable access is just it's not a reality in our lives. Yet, being aware of it and working towards it is something that we certainly want to encourage everyone to do. But why don't we have equitable access to trees?

So the consensus is that it started in the late 1930s as expansion and development really, like, stepped up to the next level. Like, suburbs were starting to rise. There was more of an effort to invest in certain neighborhoods or certain areas. Like, it was more of like a financial investment, you know, for the future, like building generational wealth, you know, like getting know, people were taking out loans and trying to build equity financially through homeownership, and that it was not equally accessible to everybody through the process of redlining. I think people have heard that term before, but just let's, like, recall, like, what it what it was.

It was a physical drawing of maps. There was an entity called the Homeowners Loan Corporation that physically drew maps of communities, and you can find some of these online. I found one of a neighborhood here in this area. It's in Iowa. I couldn't find any locally in in Rock Island, Henry Mercer Stark Counties, but that I haven't done a a deep dive either.

That one just quickly popped up. And you can see on the map that there are four different categories of neighborhoods outlined in colors, and red was one of the colors. And I showed this to you guys. The categories were listed as green being the best investment of of funds and and the most likely to grow with grow over time, grow in value over time. So there were green neighborhoods that were best.

Blue neighborhoods were identified as being a good investment. Yellow neighborhoods were was it declining? And red neighborhoods were hazardous. This I'm looking at the key right now on this map. Like, this map was done in June 1936.

So literally redlining around communities, identifying certain communities as being a hazard for financial investment to banks. So, of course, naturally, then those areas were not invested in. Now, how did they decide what areas would get those designations? Well, it was the criteria was in part based on racial and ethnic makeup of these areas, and that included areas that had substantial African American resident populations, as well as neighborhoods that had large Jewish populations, as well as immigrant populations. So these neighborhoods were really not invested in, like, invested in for the last almost hundred years.

Financially is kind of where it started. But what does that mean going forward? Well, there were no other investments being made in these communities. And so that kinda kick started. Like, you can see those patterns.

You can see trends, smaller lot sizes, you know, in certain neighborhoods. You can see, you know, less green space, smaller parks, maybe no parks. You know, it continued. And so that's from a tree standpoint, that's where we're where we're at now, which is we don't have access, and we don't have these large, mature, majestic trees because they were never planted in a lot of neighborhoods for different reasons. A lot of because they just weren't invested in.

Well, the other part of this, if you really dive into the history of this and and you look at some of what people have actually actually wrote starting in 1930s. And I mean, redlining, they didn't really do that up through the '40s, but it still was legal. It didn't become illegal until the Civil Rights Act in the 1968. So it was still around. But looking at some of the appraisal notes from some of these neighborhoods that go from a B neighborhood to graded down to a D neighborhood.

Some of the appraisal notes indicate that they noted that even though, yes, this particular block is surrounded by B graded homes. There are three homes in the middle of the block owned by African Americans. And this was the reason why they then graded them down to the red or the red line or the grade D. And I mean, you can just see what that would do if you were living in that neighborhood and you needed to get a loan or you needed you wanted to invest more into your home or anything like that or you wanted to buy a home in that neighborhood. You couldn't.

And so that's why it didn't matter the income of these folks because these were in some of these were in the affluent areas. But because that there were people of color there, they were being denied loans, all legally.

And so jumping forward, you know, like that disinvestment now, what it looks like and I found a study from the US Forest Service that did an analysis. There were 37 metropolitan areas. So this is across the country. Right? This wasn't just a Midwestern thing.

This wasn't an East Coast thing. Like, this was across the country. 37 metropolitan areas areas that were graded as d. So that's the low that would be the lowest level. So I said the colors and their their grading.

Right? A, b, c, and d. D was the one that was hazardous. On average, today, these communities have 23% canopy cover as compared to those areas that were graded as an a, have nearly twice as much canopy cover. And therefore, you know, what that means then is that they're accessing all of those benefits we talked about at the top of the show.

You know, just, you know, twice as much, a 100% more, you know, in in canopy cover. So a real challenge. It's not all hopeless. You know, this is the reality, but now that we have we have tools to analyze it. So can we talk about kinda, like, the tools?

So folks can, like, look at their own neighborhoods and just there's a tool. It's called Tree Equity Score. It's through American Forests. I want people to know about this because you can go and look at it yourself. You can look at that's where like, you can get information about, like, where communities really should be investing their tree, planting efforts, if you wanna be strategic about growing the canopy, right, and and reaching an equal, level of of canopy.

So that's so the economic benefits. If you've got a mature tree in your yard, that's gonna be worth thousands of dollars to your asking price. So, again, if you don't have that there, that just kind of further perpetuates that, I guess, the the economic effect of of not being able to get loans. Your house isn't worth as much, so on and so forth.

Yep. Increases your land value at the home scale and at the neighborhood scale too. Right? And so, like, if your home has mature trees but nobody else does, you know, it can kinda it can add value when your neighborhood is tree covered as well. Like, that's a great point, especially, you know, if you are looking at it from a financial aspect.

We're it's not the only one, but that did sort of inspire all of this to begin with. So redlining today has some outcomes, you know, we're doing tree planting efforts right now. Like like, Chris, you said, like, redlining is is not a practice that has been done for many, many years. It's been illegal for fewer than that, but, now it is illegal. There are still other things that are influencing where we can plant trees, our ability to plant and expand the urban forest.

And that has to do with, like, development patterns that we have in our community. So, like, what is just the plantable space that we have in our landscape? And a lot of times when we expand streets or when we put in, you know, different, like, density of housing units, we we eliminate spaces where we could plant really large trees. And we've talked about this before, you know, right tree, right place. And a lot of times when there's overhead power lines or when there's small planting sites, the the largest trees, like those oaks, you know, Ken, you referenced, aren't appropriate.

And so you don't get to maximize the benefits of having really large trees if we are not keeping space in our communities for really large trees or we're not planting them in the places that we could be planting them because we're choosing other things like turf grass or, you know, just open space. I could go on a big tangent. I'm not gonna go on a big tangent about that, about turf grass, Chris.

What's wrong with grass?

Nothing, but it needs to be functional.

Right. And we say that all the time on this show. Make sure your lawns are functional, functional, not not just just there. There. Yes.

Oceans of grass.

Let's talk about the tree equity score and the the American Forest website, but then let's also talk about I Tree and how we can share and, like, quantify those benefits kinda to, like, double up the reasons for planting trees. K. So the American Forest is a nonprofit that made that did these calculations, and this is kind of the the accepted standards. I have a bit of an issue with it, and I'll talk about what my concern is. I'm not discounting the tool at all.

I just want us to be, like, aware kind of of how these scores were reached and so we can be more thoughtful with our management, and so let's put a pin in that. I've got just something to bring up. But as a whole, this is an amazing website. It's treeequityscore.org, and you can find the map, and you can go to your it says national map up at the top of it, and you can find your community on the map or close to your community. It's more urban spaces.

If you're a rural resident, go to an urban space that you visit frequently and just kind of poke around in there and get a sense for, you know, the the according to this calculation, how these different neighborhoods rank in terms of reaching tree, you know, tree cover, tree canopy in compared to other spaces. And what I love about this is there's a priority index that tells you, like, the different the different quantities or the different considerations that go into calculating it. And so it changes based on, like, the the community's composition. Some, of the indexes are people of color, children and seniors because that's a mobility, and a dependency, priority. And so, like, children often have to get places by walking or have to have somebody transport them.

Seniors sometimes will have a limited, ability to to move about freely and to to be out, independently. So that score is incorporated in there. Linguistic associations, and so, neighborhoods that have, majority of folks speaking different languages, you know, bringing that cultural aspect to a neighborhood is included in there. Oh, I lost it. Oh, the health burden index.

And so, you know, existing health conditions is accounted for. Heat disparity without trees, we could have that heat island effect. I should say without trees and with impervious surfaces, that heat disparity index can be elevated. People in poverty, unemployment rates kind of all contribute into this as well as existing canopy cover. So LIDAR is used to calculate the existing canopy cover.

And all of this goes into an equation, and it explains it on the website, kinda how they get to it. But 100 is the top score. If you have a 100% in your neighborhood, like, you have not that you cannot plant in that neighborhood. Like, please, nobody leave this conversation seeing, like, I have a 100%. I don't have to plant trees.

It's not that a 100% of your community is covered with trees. It's just that you've reached a certain goal that has been set and identified for that neighborhood, whereas others have not yet, and they are could possibly be be prioritized for tree planting efforts everywhere. I think we can plant trees. There's always a place in the community to find to plant trees. Here's where my I just want to put a little, like, note, an asterisk on this, is that this information is wildly useful, and it's based on LiDAR.

So LiDAR is it's high I'll now Sounds fancy. Well, know what LiDAR is. Stop stop pretending like you don't. It's lasers. Lasers.

Know. I wanted to not do that. There's lasers.

It's like

Shark's with lasers on their head. Yeah.

In the sky. Yes. Measuring canopy cover. And so it it is lasers that are bouncing off of the the canopy cover, and it is being captured that this is it's identified as having tree cover on it. Because it is lasers being used to capture this information, the quality of those trees is not factored in.

And so we can have neighborhoods that have pretty good tree cover, but they are failing silver maples. They are, you know, hanging on ash trees that are resprouting. Like, the the quality of the trees can be lower than you might otherwise believe based on your tree equity score. So there's just some nuance that we all need to keep in mind as we are making decisions about where we're planting trees. Just because we have a high tree equity score, mostly, that would probably indicate a really high quality urban forest, it also might not.

So I just wanted to put a pin in that.

Well, it's a tool to begin the decision making process, though. So I I like that. So you you use it to maybe identify possible locations, but you're gonna need to ground truth it.

Well, it's no different than having an inventory. You know, an inventory just tells you what species there are unless the inventory is more in-depth where it assesses the overall health and age of a tree. But a lot of times, it tells you the species.

And I I don't wanna put any city foresters under the gun because I already know many of them are overworked and they don't have the resources. But if they do have a a tree inventory online like, sometimes they have a little GIS map that shows the trees. Very often, might even rank the tree health, on that inventory, but just something to ask about. But don't go in demanding. One, because I already know those city foresters, they already got too much on their plate.

Yeah. Absolutely. None of this is meant to put blame on anybody. This is just the reality we are working within, and it takes everybody to help grow the urban forest. Our managers, the arborists, residents, tree councils, tree, you know, you know, tree boards, people I mean, like, most of our community is owned by private residents.

Like, most of the land space, the the potential planting space is, you know, held in in private ownership. And so no. Thank you for doing that because I'm I'm also not trying to point fingers. Just trying to bring bring this tool, honestly, to to everybody as another way that we can encourage planting of trees. Another tool is I Tree.

Chris, do you wanna talk do you did you have a chance to poke around in that I Tree tool?

Just a little bit. I I poked around with the I Tree to kinda get a sense of the value of maybe you can look at particular species. You can get a little bit more detail on the tree. So if you have a specific tree in mind, identified by species, you kind of give that location, size, maturity, and it will come back with some statistics of how is this tree impacting its surroundings. So any of the benefits, the cooling benefits is really nice carbon sequestration and kinda how much rain rainfall will it intercept.

And so it gives sort of this list of these specific things. So this might be really useful maybe if you have to go to a on a smaller scale, maybe to a meeting with a committee or HOA or a city council for a particular block or a neighborhood and give them some really detailed information about the health of the trees there and kind of how they're impacting the benefits that they have to that space. Or it might even show a lack of benefit and the need for planting more trees. I think that the way I might use the tool though, Emily, is that I have an event where I'm at a park later this summer. And I think I'm gonna run a few of those trees through I Tree, and we're gonna tag each one.

And we'll we're gonna do a little walkabout or maybe a little a little, I don't know, scavenger hunt.

Yes. That will be that that'll be awesome. Want to

was your idea.

I wasn't gonna take credit because it also wasn't my idea. I've seen this done before. No. I want to see pictures because it's really an effective way of drawing attention to those benefits, in a way that people understand, which is dollar signs, a lot of times. Yep.

And so this tool is I, just the letter, itretools.org, and the USDA Forest Service developed it, And you can go to, like, My Tree and put in your coordinates, like, your neighborhood coordinates, all the information about the tree that you have. I'm gonna figure out those benefits, stormwater benefits, shade benefits. It kinda pulls up this I look at it like a nutrition label. It's kinda how it's designed to look like a nutrition label for your the tree benefits. You can print that and share that with folks.

You can also use it, kinda poke around in there, and use it to identify trees that are going to, over time, give you a bigger return on your investment. And so if you are doing a tree planting project and you are considering different trees and you want to kinda make a case for planting larger trees, maybe they're more expensive. I've seen that happen where, you know, money is tight and we're trying to plant some trees and there's really inexpensive species over here because they're faster growing or easy for the industry to produce. You know, they're just they're less expensive. Or we have more expensive trees over here so we could get more of the inexpensive trees versus, you know, a few of the older or the more expensive trees.

I Tree and your tree inventory might help you make a more informed decision. You might still get the cheaper trees. I'm not saying, like, always go for the more expensive trees. I'm just saying it's a more informed decision because sometimes it might be that you invest in a like, oaks, sometimes, like, tend to be more expensive trees versus, like, honey locust or maple. You know, like, there's some of those faster growing trees that are a little bit more easy to come by.

We need all of them in our community. I would argue that we need all all all of the trees, all of the places in our community with all the species, but this this tool can really help you make some just more informed decisions. And it's a really fun way to spend a whole bunch of time that you should probably be answering emails or checking on your children.

We have lots of fun websites we can go look at, like looking at wind currents. You can see the wind rose. I could just stare at that for an hour. So

Back to being socially awkward. I think that's when the three of us get along.

That's right. We hang out in the corner and the parties.

How do we wanna wrap this up? Like, I

Well, I have something more thing things as Ken, I want what you have to say.

I think I think we're good.

Okay. Yeah.

Well, Ken Okay. As, you know, a resident not tree person, which is fine.

He looks more like the Lorax than any of us.

I know. Like, do you have any questions? Like, how like, do you think that this would be useful? Like, are these useful tools to have? Like, of course, I think they're useful tools because, like, they're entertaining if nothing else.

But, you know, like, as a as a resident of a community, like, how how do you see these tools?

The oh, the first one we talked about.

The tree equity?

Tree equity one. I mean, that was interesting just while you guys were talking poking around Jacksonville to see what the different scores are. And I I mean, that kinda it's not surprising, I guess, what some of those scores are. So, I mean, I think there's use to that, I think, especially with, you know, municipalities, you know, as they're planning, utilizing something like that if they're gonna be doing tree planting. Or there's a lot of civic groups that'll do tree planting.

A lot of times, those trees are going to parks or downtown areas that don't necessarily need the trees or

Yep.

Could afford to buy the trees themselves, not necessarily areas that could use more tree cover or may not be able to necessarily afford large plantings and stuff. And the eye tree up was one I wasn't familiar with. So I haven't poked around too much, but, yeah, I think, I mean, I think that would be good just a little I have, you know, while you guys were talking was, you know, trying to figure out if I mean, what else the value of the trees in your landscape? And, you know, if you wanted to add something, you know, maybe some of the different things that that that can calculate and that maybe you wouldn't think about. You know, if you put the tree in there, what what's what's the benefit of this tree gonna be in my landscape if I were to place that?

And there's that question. Is it within so many feet of the home and stuff? And just the value the value difference of having it close to your home where it's gonna provide shade and or or, you know, back from wind in the winter is kinda staggering when you look at those numbers.

And it come you know, it it compounds over time. Like, I I have spent time in there looking at the the you can change the size of the tree. So it it kinda speaks to the argument for really investing in management of your trees as well because you can see it grow, that value grow over time. And I've said this to you guys before, like, I do speak about trees as pieces of infrastructure, and they're the only ones in our communities that give us a return on investment that is growing and not shrinking. Right?

And you can see that here, which I think is really powerful because, you know, trees require maintenance, and I hear that pushback. Know, but this is kind of a a good way to demonstrate why that's a good investment. And this looks at one tree. I do wanna, like, I guess, encourage people to keep that in mind too. Like, this looks at one tree in your community.

So while the number might come up as, like, $200 over time, and you're like, $200, like, of an return on investment, this one you know, with this one tree, like, I've got so much work to do. It's I could see somebody saying that is not worth it. Like, that reinforces my point that it's not worth it. But our community in our urban forest is not made up of just one tree. It is made up of, hopefully, a whole bunch of trees that add that up over time.

Like, five trees at $200 is a thousand dollars a year return. You know? And hopefully, most communities, most neighborhoods have more than five mature trees. So you can kinda see how it really quickly compounds. And there was one study done out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa a number of years ago, and this was before the derecho, which made that event even more heartbreaking, which showed that for every dollar that the community invested in caring for their urban forest, they received $4 of benefits on the outset.

And so, like, a four to one return on investment is pretty I might take it. And I know that's Iowa, and I know how that Mississippi can be challenging, but it's a Midwestern climate. And so that's why I bring it up here that, you know, it's applicable here too.

Well, we know that through research and study that it is not genetics that is the predictor of health. It's zip code. And planting trees is something that we can do today to maybe at least help address that disparity throughout our communities. And it will take some time because trees, they're on their own schedule. But it's something that we should do we could do right now to to help out.

So I guess, Emily, when's the best time to plant a tree?

Twenty years ago, Chris.

When's the second best time?

Today.

There you go. Oh, very good.

And tomorrow and the next day. Like, always, we have to keep planting. So

Yep. And there's a lot of efforts that go on this time of year. So use these tools that we've talked about today to maybe help identify some areas that that that really need some cover.

Yeah. Yep. And luckily, we have all of April to keep talking about this subject, Ken. I know you just can't can't contain the excitement.

Yep.

We're gonna keep giving you a hard time all of April, just so you know. Just all of April.

Is that rage or joy? I can't tell.

Maybe by the April, I'll be able to speak intelligently about trees.

Goals. Mhmm.

Well, that was a lot of great information about where we plant our trees, the historical impact of it, and how we can go about picking good spots to plant our trees today, tomorrow, and and going on into the future. Well, the Good Growing podcast is production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Emily, thanks so much for showing up this all month long to talk about trees. So we appreciate it.

Well, you couldn't keep me away if you tried. So I appreciate you not resisting and just embracing this.

I locked the door. She's still crawled in through the window. So

Here I am. Mhmm.

And Ken, thank you as always every single week for joining me talking trees as much as you love it. Yes.

Yes. Thank you, Emily. This was very interesting. And I guess Chris and Emily, let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. We're gonna be talking about favorite spring trees. Trees put on a show all year long, I'd say, but there's a some have a special show in the spring. We're gonna talk about our favorites next week. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, that is listening, or if you watch this on YouTube watching.

And as always, keep on growing. University of Illinois Extension. You ready, Emily?

As I'll ever be.

Hooray. How about you,

Ken? Yep. Okay.

Sounds very confident. So, like, this is

I think he's got this.

He's oh, in the bag.

I I believe so.

I do too.

I'm glad too of you, dear.

He's wearing his lucky plaid today. So he might should have worn plaid.

It's got orange in it.