Rain Gardens Prevent Stormwater Flooding & Pollution

Inviation from Mayor Joe O'Brien

Rain Garden Prevent Stormwater Flooding and Pollution

Monday February 28th, 6:00, Worcester Youth Center

Dear Friends,
I just wanted to let you know about a meeting I am hosting on a new initiative to manage stormwater in the city through the use of Rain Gardens. The meeting will take place at the Worcester Youth Center at 326 Chandler St on Monday, February 28th from 6pm to 8pm.

A Rain Garden is a small natural area that helps to cleanse stormwater before it flows into brooks and ponds. Rain Gardens, also called bio-retention areas, allow stormwater from impervious surfaces, such as streets and driveways, to soak into the ground. The plants and soild in the Rain Garden remove pollution from the stormwater and keep streams healthy. This meeting is a coordination between the Worcester DPW&P, Mass Audubon, Columbus Park Neighborhood Association, the Regional Environmental Council, Broad Meadow Brook Conservation Center, the Worcester Tree Initiative and the Greater Worcester Land Trust among others.

I hope you will join me for this informational meeting.
~ Joe O'Brien

Winter Hybernation is Over!!

During this winter of snow, snow and just for a little variety a little more snow WTI has been hard at work. We have moved our office from Mechanic St to 250 Barber Ave. We are in the same building as the USDA and the DCR. We have a new phone number: 508-852-6400. We are expanding out of Worcester further into the quarantine zone, we plan on planting in Boylston, Shrewsbury and Holden. A draft of the Spring Calendar of Events in posted below.

This summer we will begin our youth forestry program, Branching Out. We will be sending eight youth into the community to maintain and care for WTI trees, along with learning important job skills.

Our data collection is being organized, and by spring we hope to have a complete database of all the trees we have planted and a system to collect information about all of the trees we have planted along with future plantings. This will help as we continue to support our goal of expanding the urban forest with the hopes that our trees will survive for 80 years.

Our goal for this upcoming spring is to plant 600 trees!!!

Spring 2011 Calendar of Events

Wednesday April 13th: Thank You Sponsor Party at Green Hill Park Country Club
April 25th-April 28th: Worcester School Planting Week with Worcester City Forestry Department
Wednesday April 27th: Trian the Trainer
Friday April 29th: Arbor Day Event at University Park
Saturday April 30th: CSX Planting
Tuesday May 3rd: Boylston School Planting Event
Saturday May 7th: Tower Hill Botanical Garden Give Away
Thursday May 12th: Commerce Bank Planting
Thursday May 12th: Tree Give Away in Holden
Saturday May 21st: Tree Give Away Event at St. Peter Marion School
Thursday May 26th: Tree Give Away
Sunday June 5th: Tree Give Away Event at Worcester State University
Wednesday June 8th: Volunteer Planting Day
Thursday June 23rd: Volunteer Thank You Cook Out

Boylston ALB Meeting

Tonight at Boylston Middle/High School Clint McFarland from the USDA and Ken Gooch from the DCR spoke about the beetle that has now been found throughout the town of Boylston, there plans for surverying the area along with cutting infested trees and replantings. After the hour long presentation there was time for questions. One of the major points stressed was the importants of not transporting host species fire wood out of the quarentine zone, this leads to the unknown spread of the beetle. Overall people seem concerned that the beetle is in the area, but it is clear the USDA and DCR have a good plan established for how to handle everything. The other good news is the overall severity of the infestation in Boylston is not as bad as parts throughout the city of Worcester.

2010 Massachusetts Tree Steward Training Program

Today Peggy and I went to the first day of the Massachusetts Tree Steward Training Program at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts. The conference was presented by the Massachusetts DCR Urban & Community Forestry Program & Massachusetts Community Forestry Council. And was sponsored by: The USDA Forest Service and The Massachusetts Tree Wardens & Foresters Association.

We learned a variety of different things. We started the day with tree identification, then had a quick introduction to the working forest initiative, tree response to pruning, and then after lunch we learned about utilizing tree inventories and iTree. Then we finished the day with a look at Worcester as a case study.

The best part of the day was learning about utilizing tree inventories. We were introduced to google fusion tables. This is going to be a great resource for use to look at where all of our trees, keep records of all our tree health and create maps of where our trees are.

9:00 Registration and Coffee

9:30 Welcome and Overview
(Eric Seaborn & Alan Snow)

9:45 Tree Identification Outside
(Joe Perry)

10:45 Introduction to the Working
Forest Initiative (Douglas
Hutcheson & Michael
Downey)

11:30 Trees Response to Pruning
Out Doors (Brian Kane)

12:30 LUNCH, provided

1:30 Utilizing Tree Inventories
(Mike Olkin)

2:15 Break

2:30 Introduction to iTree Tools
(David Bloniarz)

3:30 Looking at Community
Trees, Worcester a Case
Study (Eric Seaborn)

Quinsigamond Community College

Saturday, October 23rd at Qunsigamond Community College from 8:30-12 we planted 65 trees with the help from the boy scouts and girl scouts. Congressman McGovern, Lt. Gov. Murray, Senator Chandler, Rep O'Day, Mayor O'Brien, City Manager O'Brien and representatives from QCC and the Scotties/ReLeaf project and American Forest were on hand. The event was sponsor by Scotties/RELeaf.

We were able to plant 65 trees in 7 different locations around the QCC campus. Spruce, Dawn Red Woods, Red Oaks, Serviceberries are just some of the species we planted. We added to the 100 trees that we previously planted with the help of CSX last spring. The weather was beautiful and everyone worked hard to learn how to properly plant a tree and then planted the trees. Everyone recieved goody bags from QCC and t-shirts/bags from Scotties REleaf. It was a great effort of the community coming together to help plant trees in one of the hardest hit areas.



Read about the day!

WTI in the Worcester Telegram

Holden Give Away

Today we held a give away at a new development called Shady Lane in Holden. We were able to give away 52 trees. The demonstration were held in peoples yard. We gave away flowering plums, dogwoods, blackgum tupelo and cherry trees. The developments in Holden have been stripped off all the trees in order to make room for houses, the developer is then responsable for "replanting" but most of the time only one or two trees are planted per lot. It is nice to be able to add more trees to these neighborhoods.

Midland Elementary School Planting

Today along with the kindergarden at Midland Street Elementary school we planted two cherry trees to help add some trees to the new place space that the school completed over the summer. The highlight of the day was when I poured the water into the hole all of the kids started yelling "gross! gross!" but after explaining to them the importance of water to the trees survival they didn't think it was as gross. They also really enjoyed when I was breaking the root ball apart, as I described it as if I were giving it a hair cut, they thought I had given the tree a really cool hair cut.