Reports to the DPW City Arborist and works closely with the Information Systems Manager for the DPW. Specific duties include but are not limited to the following:

• Assist in updating an inventory of street trees in the City.
• Create and/or update the tree inventory for the Cambridge Common, Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge Golf Course and various other locations throughout the City.
• Collect information on street trees including caliper, species and location.
• Record location of trees in the field using GIS software.
• Field survey on foot covering potentially +/- 5 miles a day
• Coordinate work through the DPW Forestry Unit and MIS

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: Working knowledge in personal computer operation and experience in working with Windows programs such as Access, Excel and Word. Proficiency in GIS as well as an MCA, ISA and/or MCLP certification is a plus. Undergraduate coursework in Horticulture/Forestry/Plant Biology desired. Massachusetts Driver’s License Class D preferable.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:
• Ability to identify common tree species
• Ability to work independently
• Ability to read a map
• Good writing skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills

PHYSICAL DEMANDS/WORK ENVIRONMENT: Moderate physical activity including lifting, bending, squatting, stretching, pushing, dragging, reaching, and pulling. Walk up to several miles a day. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions. Employee will be exposed to all weather conditions.

HOURS OF WORK: 30 hrs per week, 6–8 weeks temporary position

RATE: $16.63/hour

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Internal applicants submit a job bidding form and 2 copies of both your resume and letter of interest; external applicants submit your resume and letter of interest via email to: employment@cambridgema.gov or to Personnel Dept, Room 309, City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA 02139. Fax 617–349-4312. Review of resumes will begin 05/31/13.

The position reports to the DPW City Arborist and works closely with the Landscape Administrator for the DPW. Specific duties include but are not limited to the following:

• Responsibly represent the Cambridge Department of Public Works – Parks and Forestry Division
• Inspect, water, and maintain selected young trees throughout the City.
• Ride a bike with trailer attached loaded with equipment and connect equipment to fire hydrants in order to water trees and fill ‘Gator Bags’ with water. Weed existing tree wells
• Interact with residents and businesses and educate them about tree care.
• Supervise volunteers.
• Perform related tasks as needed.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
Background in urban forestry, horticulture, or environmental studies. Some supervisory experience working with volunteers highly desirable Undergraduate coursework in Horticulture, Forestry or Environmental Studies strongly preferred. Ability to identify common tree species. Ability to work independently. Strong communication and writing skills. Excellent interpersonal skills

PHYSICAL DEMANDS/WORK ENVIRONMENT:
Moderate physical activity including lifting, bending, squatting, stretching, pushing, dragging, reaching, and pulling. Exposure to all weather conditions. Work outside for extended periods of time. Ride a bike for several miles a day. Pre-employment Physical Examination may be required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

HOURS OF WORK: 30 hrs per week, temporary position (up to 10 weeks during summer).

RATE: $16.63/hour

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Internal applicants submit a job bidding form and 2 copies of both your resume and letter of interest; external applicants submit your resume and letter of interest via email to: employment@cambridgema.gov or to Personnel Dept, Room 309, City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA 02139. Fax 617–349-4312. Review of resumes will begin 05/31/13.

The City of Post Falls is accepting applications for a part-time Urban Forestry Assistant, approximately 16 hours per week, with the Park Department’s Urban Forestry division. The position assists the Urban Forester in the maintenance and management of public trees, performing tasks such as tree inventory, tree health evaluations, resource mapping, tree pruning, insect and disease control, maintenance of irrigation systems, etc.

This position requires the ability to identify urban tree species. Prior experience with Arcview GIS and ISA certification is preferred. Work is performed outdoors, frequently unassisted. $12.92 per hour, no benefits.

Application packets are available at City Hall, 408 N Spokane Street, Post Falls, ID 83854 or by visiting the web at www.postfallsidaho.org. To be considered for the position, applications must be filled out completely. Applicants will be notified by mail or phone as to the status of the hiring process once the application is received. This position is open until filled. EOE.

The latest issue of the Alliance for Community Trees Treebune News for members, friends, and partners.

Del Aire, CA — Food forests and urban orchards are flourishing across the country. In Los Angeles, a trio of activist artists have planted California’s first public fruit park, an “edible art” site inspired by pioneering local nonprofit TreePeople. In Seattle, the organization City Fruit has undertaken the Beacon Food Forest, funded in part by ACTrees, and Chicago is working to preserve forgotten fruit through the Rarities Orchard Project.

Photo credit: Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times

Fruit looms large in the California psyche. Since the 1800s, dewy images of oranges, lemons and other fruits have been a lure for seekers of the state’s postcard essence, symbols of fertile land, felicitous climate and the possibilities of pleasure.

Now a cheeky trio of artists have turned fruit trees into cultural symbols as well. The group, known as Fallen Fruit, recently planted what is being billed as the state’s first public fruit park in an unincorporated community with neatly clipped lawns outside Los Angeles.

The park is part of a growing “fruit activist” movement, a variation on a theme of urban agriculture. The Los Angeles County Arts Commission initiated the project to “fulfill a civic purpose,” said Laura Zucker, the commission’s executive director, addressing the public-health advantage for communities that are so-called food deserts, with few stores and healthy restaurants.

“They give endlessly and don’t ask for anything in return,” Austin Young, one of Fallen Fruit’s members, said of the fruit trees that make up the group’s latest “art piece” — a fledgling orchard of Tropic Snow white peaches, Mariposa plums and other trees installed alongside swing sets and basketball hoops here in Del Aire Park.

Fallen Fruit, which also comprises Matias Viegener and David Allen Burns, has become well known among art and culinary cognoscenti here and across social media. One of the group’s first activities was mapping publicly accessible fruit trees in Silver Lake and other Los Angeles neighborhoods, including private trees with succulent fruit tantalizingly draped over public rights of way.

To kick off the opening of the fruit park here, which consists of 27 trees planted on the site and 60 more distributed to residents, the group held one of their ritual public “fruit jams,” in which participants gather around a portable stove to make never-before-seen concoctions from whatever surplus fruit is available.

Del Aire, population 10,000 and one of about 140 unincorporated communities scattered throughout Los Angeles County, is a somewhat isolated area bordered on the north and east by the 405 and 105 freeways that feels light-years away from the Frank Gehry world of contemporary Los Angeles art. With its modest postwar ranch houses built for aerospace workers, “Del Aire is not to be confused with Bel Air,” said John Koppelman, a heavy-truck operator and the president of the neighborhood association.

The decision to go with “edible art” as part of a larger park renovation, rather than a standard mural, was seen as a way to foster residents’ participation, said Karly Katona, a deputy to Mark Ridley-Thomas, the local county supervisor. Traditionally, public works officials have opposed fruit trees because of maintenance concerns, she said, like sidewalks stained or made slippery by fallen rotted fruit.

“There is an understanding that the community will be involved in upkeep” of the park, she said. “It’s an experiment,” she added. “It might not work.”

The heady philosophical question of whether fruit trees are art does not seem to preoccupy residents like Virgie Shields, 89, who recalled that the neighborhood was “a mud puddle with polliwogs” before 1950, the year she moved onto the choice corner lot that now boasts a persimmon tree.

“There’s a sense of shared anticipation,” said Dee Williams, an adjunct photography professor at Chapman University, who can admire her new Beauty plum tree from her kitchen window. “It speaks to the future, because everyone wants to see the trees do well.”

For the members of Fallen Fruit, who once videotaped lingonberries, salmonberries and blueberries in the Norwegian Arctic for a project titled “The Loneliest Fruit in the World,” the process of planting and harvesting fruit is a community bonding experience — an act of “social art” in which public space is reimagined. The fruit from Del Aire’s trees is to be divvied up among “host families,” as the artists call the residents, with a fruit map posted on the Web. “Fruit is nonpolarizing,” Mr. Burns said. “When you walk through a place that has fruit trees, it’s typically a place that feels optimistic and abundant, rather than desperate or ignored.”

Though Fallen Fruit is rooted in Los Angeles, the group is also part of a growing fruit-activist movement, midwifed by pioneers like TreePeople in Los Angeles, which has given away some 200,000 trees, including thousands of fruit trees, since 1983. Newer arrivals include “urban space hackers” like the Guerrilla Grafters in San Francisco, who surreptitiously graft fruit tree branches onto purely ornamental trees. Another is the San Francisco Garden Registry, which tracks urban farmers online and, like a fruit dating service, helps them meet and share their surplus harvests.

Margaret Crawford, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, said that Fallen Fruit and other activists were tapping into urban agriculture as a growing force in which creative noncommercial possibilities for public spaces are being explored beyond community gardening.

“There is a new political philosophy emerging in which literally anybody can be an agent of transformation,” she said. “It’s bringing attention to the cumbersome and always-expanding regulatory apparatus of the city.”

New orchards are springing up in other cities, too, including Chicago, where the Chicago Rarities Orchard Project seeks to preserve forgotten fruit like the  pawpaw, and Seattle, where Seattle City Fruit volunteers are liberating orchards long concealed by vines. Another Seattle project is the Beacon Food Forest, growing things like figs, quinces and hazelnuts on public land.

Back in Del Aire, the arrival of fruit trees in a California public park resurrects a bit of history, said Douglas Cazaux Sackman, a professor at the University of Puget Sound and the author of “Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden” (University of California Press, 2005). The citrus groves that once defined Los Angeles and environs largely disappeared in a welter of real estate development.

Though minuscule by agribusiness standards, the new fruit park is a cause for celebration, he said. “It brings that golden wonder of California back for people to enjoy and be nourished by.”

Source: “Tasty, and Subversive, Too,” The New York Times (May 11, 2013)

Related Resources:

ACTrees Grant Helps Seattle Urban Orchard Blossom

The Nuts and Bolts of Fruit and Nut Trees

Evan tree planting on the Neponset River Greenway, Dorchester, MA

It’s traditional at Evan’s Temple for the Bat and Bar Mitzvah to do tzedakah (social action) projects. This action makes clear that the Mitzvot (commandments) to which they will be obligated encompass both ritual and social action. It’s also a way to underscore the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or repairing the world.

This is what motivated Evan, and he chose to focus his Bar Mitzvah celebration on trees and to support ACTrees for his Mitzvah project. Along with the importance of trees in Jewish tradition, Evan feels that trees and urban forests help repair the world in many ways—not only through the obvious environmental benefits, but also through numerous economic, public health, and social benefits.

Evan wrote to everyone invited to his Bar Mitzvah about the benefits of trees and urban forests and asked them to consider donating to ACTrees and participating in local tree planting events. Then, at the celebration following his Bar Mitzvah, he gave each person a Colorado Spruce seedling and asked them to plant the trees when they returned to their homes.

Colorado Spruce seedlings given to those who attended Evan’s Bar Mitzvah

Evan and his family also made a donation to ACTrees, and in late April he participated in a tree planting event sponsored by the Boston Natural Areas Network, an ACTrees member organization.

The tree planting took on added significance for Evan in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings because it took place in the tightknit community of Dorchester, which was home to the youngest victim of that terrible tragedy. Evan said that he really felt that the trees that were planted will help the community heal by bringing it new life, and hope for the future.

ACTrees is deeply grateful to Evan. His actions are a great model for educating about the value of tree planting and care, and taking action for trees in his own community. We hope others are inspired by his generous initiative and step-up to volunteer for trees in their community, or consider designating ACTrees as a beneficiary for a similar significant life event. Link to

Thanks Evan!

Partnering with area sports teams is one great way to score more trees for your community. Local nonprofits are hosting plantings with baseball, soccer, football, and hockey teams to enhance urban canopies across the nation. Professional teams realize how vital it is to maintain the health of surrounding area environments, and are now joining forces with local nonprofits to green their communities. As a result, planting trees for goals, baskets, and home runs has proved a win for fans of teams and fans of trees.

Registration coming soon.

Trainers:

Jimmy Owens, Vice President Business Development, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (Philadelphia, PA)
For each home run hit by a Phillies player this season, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society plants a tree in Philadelphia area parks, neighborhoods, and watershed areas. Last year, thanks to the Home Runs for Trees program, 158 new trees were planted in the region.

Greg Tudor, Development Manager, Friends of Trees (Portland, OR)
Every time the Portland Timbers soccer team scores a goal, they partner with Friends of trees to plant a tree through their Score a Goal, Plant a Tree program. To date, the partnership has contributed 900 trees to the urban forest in the Portland metro region.

Webcast attendees will learn about:
* Co-branding with sports teams
* Reaching and engaging fans
* Leveraging the partnership to include diverse stakeholders
* Tying the partnership into existing planting programming

About the Webcast Series
The Webcast Series is the Alliance for Community Trees’ monthly webcast held at the lunch hour. The goal is to create informal training opportunities for local urban and community forestry organizations. The content is geared to mainly serve the needs of volunteer organizations and community groups, although webcasts are open to all.

The trainings leverage local successes by amplifying to a larger audience the model organizations’ methods, materials, and approaches. Sessions are planned to last no more than one hour, with two presenters speaking on the same topic from slightly different perspectives, each for 10–15 minutes, followed by 10–15 minutes of questions and answers.

CEU Approved: 0 Hour
CFE Category 1 Approved: 0 Hour

Portland Parks and Recreation (PP&R) is seeking an Urban Forestry Permitting Supervisor. The Urban Forestry Permitting Supervisor is a key leadership and implementation position in the regulation of the City of Portland’s urban forest. PP&R Urban Forestry is responsible for management of the City’s 1.5 million park and street trees, uncounted private trees, and ensuring the future of the city’s forest assets, through regulatory, operations, science and education programs.

The position supervises up to 15 tree inspectors and customer service, technical and administrative staff, and oversees day-to-day operation of a regulatory program to ensure compliance with City urban forestry codes, ordinances and goals. The incumbent must have strong people-management skills to create a professional, cohesive and high-performance team with a service-oriented work ethic, and must be skilled in promoting workplace diversity and creating a positive work environment.

The Urban Forestry Permitting Supervisor must be versed in urban forest management and arboricultural practices and standards, principles and practices of urban forest and municipal regulation and permitting and be familiar with industry trends. This position requires communication and collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders, from other city bureaus to public issue groups and private citizens.

The Urban Forestry Permitting Supervisor assists in yearly preparation and management of an annual budget of over $3 million dollars, and works with the Urban Forestry Operations Supervisor and City Forester to assist with planning and strategy for management of the City’s urban forest.

A Bachelor’s degree in urban forestry, forestry, forest resources management, natural resources management, horticulture, public management, public administration, urban planning or related field is highly desired. Site location for this position is the Urban Forestry Facility, East Delta Park, 10910 N. Denver Avenue, Portland.

The following qualifications are required for this position:

• Demonstrated knowledge ability and experience leading a professional team that supports workplace diversity, and is service-oriented with a high-function work ethic.
• Demonstrated knowledge, ability and experience overseeing day-to-day program operations and activities of urban forestry inspection and customer service staff.
• Demonstrated knowledge and experience collaborating with governmental, non-governmental and private stakeholders;
• Demonstrated knowledge and experience of urban forest management and arboricultural practices and standards.
• Demonstrated knowledge and experience of urban forest and municipal regulation, including permitting, and code implementation and compliance, procedures and practices.

Applicants must also possess:

International Society of Arboricultural Arborist Certification.
International Society of Arboricultural Hazard Risk Assessor Certification required within nine (9) months of hire.
Pesticide Applicators License required within six months of hire.
A valid state driver’s license and acceptable driving record.

Click here to apply.