VIDEO: Eagle Rock Centennial Tree Planting Kicks Off

Some three-score volunteers began Eagle Rock’s Centennial Street Tree Planting drive this morning as the first of a series of environmental and beautification initiatives in which trees that grace iconic boulevards in such European cities as Paris and Barcelona will become a staple of The Rock.

The project was organized by a group of volunteers from Eagle Rock and Highland Park led by Jane Tsong, an Eagle Rock resident and co-founder of the blog Bipediality. Funding for the project came from numerous organizations, including the and the Highland Park Neighborhood Council, plus California ReLeaf, a non-profit organization that coordinates grants to local groups, urban forestry researchers and educators, with support from CAL FIRE (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. TERA (The Eagle Rock Association) provided crucial administrative support for the project.

TreePeople, a nonprofit group that educates communities on how to plant and maintain trees, provided guidance, support and technical advice during the planting drive. Volunteers, armed with shovels, buckets of “magic” mulch and 10-foot wooden stakes to bind young  trees for stability, fanned out on sidewalks on both sides of Colorado Boulevard east of Townsend Avenue, with a goal of planting nine trees today.

The planting of the first tree, near the northwest corner of Colorado and Townsend, was a somewhat solemn affair combined with a lecture by TreePeople coordinator and Eagle Rock resident Marcos Trinidad, who was part of a large effort in January to nurse neglected trees on Townsend and on the Avenue 51 bypass on the hills above .

The tree of choice was the London Plane, one of the most beloved street trees around the world. “As far as trees go, they tend to be consistently well-behaved in urban environments,” Tsong said, comparing London Planes to the ficus, whose sinewy roots are notorious for ripping apart sidewalks.

London Planes are prevalent along the Swork portion of Colorado Boulevard and “we’re bringing more of them here so that Colorado will get more shade,” Tsong said.

The volunteers will plant four more London Planes along Colorado in a few weeks, when the ground isn’t as wet as it currently is from recent rains, and as many as 16 in Highland Park on April 30, Tsong said. The planting drive coincides with the 100th anniversary of Eagle Rock's incorporation as a city in 1911—before the neighborhood became part of Los Angeles in 1923.