Benicia Tree Foundation is offering a tour of its Lake Herman Open Space Project to anyone interested in learning about tree planting in city-owned open spaces. This one-hour tour will begin at 9AM on Saturday, September 11th, and involves a 10 to 15-minute walk from Benicia Community Park on the trail towards Lake Herman.
The tour’s purpose is to offer the community an opportunity to take a closer look at this pilot project and hopefully develop support for expanding this tree planting to other areas of city-owned open space. Tour participants will learn about the history of the project, its successes and challenges, and opportunities for future growth. BTF Board members will lead the tour and be available to answer questions.
This past year BTF has been networking with other organizations that plant trees in open spaces. These organizations include the California Native Plant Society, the Napa Resource Conservation District, the Sacramento Tree Foundation and Magic in Palo Alto. All these organizations use native oaks as the centerpiece of their projects with the goal of reintegrating oaks and other native vegetation within the developed California landscape to restore this ecologically diverse and distinctive ecosystem to our cities. BTF Board members have been meeting with these groups and visiting their projects to learn how tree planting in open space can be successful in Benicia.
After the tour, we hope participants will ask the City to evaluate the potential for planting more trees in city-owned open space, especially with an expanded trail system. On-line comments can be sent through the website the City established for its update of the Parks Trails & Open Space Master Plan, www.lovebeniciaparks.com. A draft of the updated Master Plan is scheduled to be released later this year.
Above: In August, BTF Board members gave Zarah Wyly (on right) a tour of the Lake Herman Open Space Project. Zarah is Director of Urban Ecology for the Sacramento Tree Foundation and we have been sharing information on how open spaces are an important part of our urban forest.
