Street Trees (2022-2023)

Walking has always been my first choice for exploring a new place. I can choose my pace, back up, detour down a side street, and stop and look for as long as I want. I notice things I wouldn’t see from a car window. When I first moved to my neighborhood, I walked the surrounding areas every day, learning the best routes to get to places that were important to me. Those walks quickly became as much about the walk itself and what I would see along the way as about the destination. More than the street names and houses, what captured my attention were the trees growing in the public right of ways. These “street trees” are managed by the city and grow mostly in the grassy strips between sidewalks and streets.

Street trees have long been part of the fabric of cities. For me, they have become living sculptures and familiar characters in the landscape. Their form, adaptation to the space they’re growing in, and impact on that space were what first caught my eye, but their story turned out to be richer than I’d imagined, as I began to understand their importance to the well-being of the people with whom they share the neighborhood.

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