~ December 21, 2024

Earlier this season we attended the Partners in Community Forestry Conference put on by the Arbor Day Foundation in Chicago! We had a great time learning from tree champions, networking with industry leaders, and exploring the Old Chicago Post Office Rooftop Meadow. After the conference ended we had the pleasure of hosting our longtime friend and friend of the trees, Nancy Buley from J. Frank Schmidt Nursery, for a few days to our farm for a nice country retreat from the hustle and bustle of the city. 

The Partners Conference was not only informative but also inspiring. We heard from so many organizations and teams who are doing amazing work across the country and world through the power of trees and urban forestry. Because the conference was hosted in Chicago, many of the organizations highlighted were right in our backyard, like Chicago Region Trees Initiative, Urban Growers Collective, and Openlands, to name a few. Since this was an international conference, however, we learned more about how other communities, states, and countries are combatting climate change, improving community health, and building resilience through people and plants. 

There is amazing work being done in California through The California Schoolyard Forest System, a statewide initiative to increase tree canopy on public school grounds to shade and protect PreK-12 students from extreme heat caused by climate change. Presenter Shannon Gamson Danks shared that America’s public schools are the country’s largest and most visited public lands – National Parks receive around 325 million visitors annually, while public school grounds receive over 9 billion annual visits. Her presentation challenged us all to think about the importance of green space and canopy cover at our schools and the benefits trees provide to our children’s learning environments and overall health. 

Over in Detroit the Michigan State Extension is working on creating changing food deserts into food forests. We heard from Stathis Pauls from the MSU Extension who shared about their food forest created from an abandoned lot where a school had been demolished and left empty. He outlined the population decline of Detroit and how that changes the city’s landscape with vacant buildings and lots. The city gave them this lot as a blank slate, and in just a few years after the project began, they now have a fully productive permaculture food forest that brings nutrition, education, and employment back to the community! 

Moving abroad we were inspired by the Armenian Tree Project, whose goal is “to assist the Armenian people in using trees to improve their standard of living and protect the global environment. In so doing, we are guided by the need to promote self-sufficiency, aid those with the fewest resources first, and conserve the indigenous ecosystem.” Their organization has multiple nursery sites throughout the country, as well as a backyard nursery program that empowers locals to plant seedlings in their backyards, which the ATP buys back once they’re ready to plant in the ecosystem. They have planted over 8 million trees since they started back in 1994! 

There were so many incredible stories and people to learn from. You can check out the full agenda, including presentation slides, here! We left with a renewed sense of mission for what we do and found lots of inspiration in the work being done worldwide through trees. We truly enjoyed this conference and had a great time hanging out in Chicago with some of our very best tree friends! Next year, the Partners Conference will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada from November 12–13. Maybe we’ll see you there! 

~ Maggie Thomas Harper