Replant Minnehaha Trees

10/16/2021

Planting Day was a huge success!!! Thanks a million to Tree Trust and all the neighbors and supporters who volunteered. In three hours, multiple volunteer crews replanted around 50 trees and celebrated afterward with pizza from the Hamline Church bread oven. It was so cool to look around and see trees going in the ground all around us!

Grateful for the beautiful weather and TREES back along Minnehaha, Asbury, and Simpson!!

10/11/2021

We are less than a week away from Replanting Day, October 16!! City foresters and Tree Trust staff have been out marking planting sites this weekend. To sign up to help replant: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/replant-minnehaha-avenue-volunteer-tree-planting-registration-181263663497

It’s time to say a huge thank you to two of the folks in these photos: City of Saint Paul forester Adam Strehlow and Karen Zumach, Tree Trust Director of Community Forestry. These two have been complete champions of this replanting project. Replanting this fall simply would not have been possible without their leadership and partnership. Adam and Karen, if you see this, THANK YOU for what you do!

09/28/2021

Another great project by Tree Trust in our neighborhood!

We had a wonderful day, welcoming Tree Trust to our block! We are so thankful for their organization and volunteers for all their hard work and care in teaching our kiddos about the importance of trees in our lives. All our Huskies, from our littlest learners in SPPS Community Education ECFE to our 5th graders helped plant their own trees and shrubs.

Big Love to the parent who wrote the grant that brought this program to our school! We began this project in November of 2019, with the original planting date in Spring of 2020.

Many thanks also to our partners at Hancock Recreation Center and the folks in Saint Paul Public Schools SPPS Facilities, and also to our neighbors and families for organizing the event over the course of a pandemic and many changes.

(We also had delicious pizza for our volunteers from new, local pizza joint, Doge Pizza. We love the Midway!)

09/25/2021

Let’s talk TREE SELECTION! Tree Trust is in process of ordering and tracking down 50+ trees for our Oct 16 replanting date 🎉 Many neighbors have expressed the hope that the trees replanted along Minnehaha will be biodiverse and be a foundation for a healthy, long-lasting urban tree canopy. That goal is definitely shared by Tree Trust and the City of St. Paul in their tree selection for this project!

Many factors will influence which trees are replanted:

1) Recommended species for our climate and urban boulevards: the City of St. Paul has a list of best species for our area, which Tree Trust plans to choose from when sourcing trees. The pictures with this post are a few of the species from that list.

2) Homeowner preference: Several homeowners indicated their ideal choice from the city’s recommended species list. Tree Trust is working to track down those specific trees so that we can plant the preferred trees wherever possible.

3) Biodiversity: The city aims to plant mixes of species and tries not to have any one species account for more than a certain percentage of city-wide trees. More locally, our neighborhood already has a high percentage of maple and linden trees, so we probably will not plant many (if any) of those. Tree Trust is using the city’s tree data to make sure our replanting increases the biodiversity of the Hamline Midway tree canopy.

4) Availability: Our replanting is fairly late in the season when tree nurseries have ready-to-plant trees available. And we need a specific size range (at least as big as the city requires for replanting, but not too big for Tree Trust’s tools and equipment to manage). Tree Trust has said it will be a challenge to find the group of trees that fit the species and size requirements at this point in the season, but that they are up for the challenge 😊 and they are certainly experts at tracking down trees that fit their projects! (Have I mentioned - We are so fortunate to draw on Tree Trust’s experience with this type of project!!) If Tree Trust really could not find enough trees to purchase that fit goals #1-3 on this list, we could potentially delay some of the replanting until spring. But we are hopeful that we can source 50+ trees and we are planning toward planting that many on October 16!

What other questions do you have about tree selection and tree species? Let us know in the comments!

09/20/2021

28 more stumps bit the dust this weekend! Here’s one of the Absolutely Stumped crew cleaning up wood chips and backfilling after stump grinding. Another big step forward to prep for our replanting day on October 16! 🥳

09/17/2021

We are still collecting permit applications from homeowners who lost trees!

If you want your tree replanted this fall, OCTOBER 4 is the very last day to turn in a permit application

08/29/2021

Here's the update that's going in the Hamline Midway Coalition newsletter this month, thought it would be helpful to share here too!

The Replant Minnehaha Trees project continues with leaps and bounds toward replanting this fall. This project is a cooperative effort by a number of community organizations, businesses, and individuals, to speed up the replanting of trees removed along Minnehaha and surrounding streets in 2021 due to emerald ash borer infestation. Following a fundraising event on August 12, the project has reached its $16,000 funding goal! This means that the project could afford to cover stump-grinding for all of the trees that were removed along and near Minnehaha this year, paving the way for replanting to take place as soon as this fall.

Stump-grinding has begun for the blocks where all of the homeowners have signed replanting permit applications. The main challenge for the project at this point is to collect permit applications from more property owners on blocks where only some of the owners have submitted their permits so far. The city is requiring permit applications from an entire block before stump grinding and replanting can proceed for that block. Homeowners who lost trees are encouraged to submit their permit application ASAP!

The project applied for a replanting grant through Tree Trust’s “Green Futures” program and is awaiting the official confirmation that Tree Trust will work with the city forestry department to provide a biodiverse mix of trees for replanting the boulevard this fall. A fall replanting date will be announced soon and planting volunteers will be needed! To volunteer for replanting, sign up for weekly updates, or submit a permit application, email [email protected]. For more information, check out the Replanting Minnehaha Trees page on Facebook or www.hamlinechurch.org/serve/green-team/replant-minnehaha-trees/.

< Back to Hamline Church Earthkeepers About the Replant Minnehaha Trees Project When the city needed to remove many trees along Minnehaha Ave this spring due to emerald ash borer infestation, th…

08/24/2021

First 18 stumps are out!! Stump grinding happens in three stages: removing the stump, backfilling the hole, and carrying away the chips.

This first group included three blocks. The city has asked us to collect permit applications for an ENTIRE block (from each address where a tree was removed) before we can proceed with stump grinding for that block. This has certainly slowed things down and created some frustration when we are unable to reach some of the homeowners. But it’s definitely motivation to get more of the replanting sites signed up than we had originally set as our goal!

We will hopefully have another group of blocks ready for stump grinding in the next few days!