TreePeople's Unbucket list

Check Off Your Unbucket List

Just when you thought you didn’t need another to-do list in your life, Unbucket launches to encourage your list to grow. With Unbucket, you can to expand your to-do list in the direction of the things—outdoor activities, charitable causes, learning opportunities, intellectual pursuits—you’re most passionate about.

Unbucket is an app for sharing lists of things to experience with the people you care about most. TreePeople compiled a list of Simple Steps to Grow a Greener City that invites you to make an immediate contribution to enhancing the urban forest by planting a new tree with your neighbors or getting the kids involved in setting up a rain barrel to catch runoff for irrigating your outdoor plants.… Read more >>

MLK Blvd. in South L.A., 1990 and 2008

A Living Memorial and a Model for Community Engagement

On January 15, 1990, three thousand people came out to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by planting 400 trees along the entire length of MLK Boulevard in South Los Angeles–seven miles in a single day. At this event, organized by TreePeople, each tree was named in memory of someone, and then adopted by a neighboring resident committed to its ongoing care. The result is the largest living monument to Dr. King in existence.

The idea for this monument came from a TreePeople Citizen Forester named Eudora Russell, who for years had dreamed of turning the barren stretch of King Boulevard into a fitting memorial to its namesake.… Read more >>

Fruit Tree load-up, photo: Amanda Keller Konya

Grow a Food Forest in a Food Desert

The term “food desert” describes an urban community that lacks access to fresh, healthy food in local shops and grocery stores. These are regions in our city where, for various reasons, neighborhood retailers can’t or don’t stock produce and healthful alternatives to processed fast food.

In Inglewood’s “100 Seeds of Change” initiative, residents have taken health matters into their own hands, growing fruits and vegetables themselves—and in temperate Los Angeles, they can turn even a small patch of earth into a food forest.… Read more >>

Neighbors planting trees in Rose Avenue. Photo: Juan Villegas

Building resilient communities one tree–and many neighbors–at a time

Want to know how to survive the next natural disaster? Think community and good neighbors, not concrete barricades and security guards, as Eric Klinenberg recently recommended. Klinenberg says in an NPR interview,  “In light of the risk we face with climate change, I sincerely hope that we invest in the social infrastructure. Because when a real disaster strikes, it’s the social stuff that might make the difference between life and death.” At TreePeople we’ve been building resilient communities one tree at a time for more than 40 years through programs designed specifically to connect people with each other through environmental stewardship.… Read more >>

Angeles2_crop

Vote for a local school’s environmental initiatives and send students to the mountains to restore fire-damaged forest

Starting January 9, students from 17 Los Angeles area middle and high schools will compete in TreeByTree, a social media campaign to win a field trip to help restore fire-damaged wilderness. You can support them by logging on to Facebook over the next five weeks and voting as often as once a day for your favorite environmental initiatives these students are spearheading.

TreePeople and Southern California Edison (SCE) have partnered in creating TreeByTree to support environmental stewardship among local youth.… Read more >>