Tree Parking
How can we plant trees to make our streets around schools cooler, slower, and safer for walking and rolling?
“Tree Parking” is a simple idea: Petaluma students, with adult support, create and care for "tree parklets" (traffic-calming mid-block “bump-outs” with native trees and plants, and benches) on narrowed “neighborhood greenway” routes around elementary schools, as part of a K-12 eco-literacy and climate action curricula. Or, to update Joni Mitchell’s words, our youth will “make paradise out of a parking lot.”
Tree Parking has been endorsed by a majority of the members of Petaluma’s Climate Action Commission, Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee, and Tree Committee. We are currently developing a pilot test of the curriculum component by planting the trees on the McNear Elementary School campus. See tinyurl.com/treeparking for more details.
