The Enderly Park neighborhood has lived many lifetimes: A farming community transformed into an army base, Camp Greene, that ballooned the city’s population by about 40,000 people; a largely Black, prosperous enclave; a gentrifying, fast-changing urban neighborhood. On this sunny spring morning, Jane Singleton Myers stood beside a young sapling that will see the neighborhood’s iterations over the next 50 years.
“This one is a persimmon tree,” said Myers, executive director of nonprofit TreesCharlotte, “So, it will bear some fruit which will be fun for the animals that might roam around or if some brave Charlotteans want to have a taste.”
TreesCharlotte planted the tree in Enderly Park last March. It’ll still be a few years before anyone can gamble on a ripe or unripe persimmon.
The persimmon will be a nice tree. But Charlotteans would need to plant 31,000 trees per year just to maintain the city’s current canopy. Single-family residential areas boast the most robust canopy. It’s also where the most tree canopy loss is occurring due to tree removals, development, and an aging canopy.
To reach “50 by 50” — the city’s longtime goal of 50% canopy cover by 2050 — over a million new trees would need to take root over the next 16 years.
“If we don’t change what we’re doing dramatically, we will get down to 40% by 2050,” Myers said.
That’s why TreesCharlotte launched a new citywide educational campaign called Charlotte Without Trees, to educate people on the city’s declining canopy.
We walked under a broad willow oak that loomed over the trail. The tree’s leaves shaded the walkway as the morning heat creeps in. The forecast for today is a high of 89 degrees.
Krysten Reilly, TreesCharlotte’s director of programs, helped Jack Morton, a project coordinator with Southwood Corporation, grapple with a bungee cord behind the tree. The mesh sign hangs around the base of the mature oak. The nonprofit will be hanging similar banners throughout Charlotte.
“It’s so easy when you’re walking in a forested area or nice park like this to take for granted the trees, the shade they provide, the cooling factor, the less stress that you feel,” Reilly said .
Planting more trees in parks is an easy way to increase canopy coverage, but it’s not always where trees are needed the most.
A decades-old legacy of discriminatory city planning policy, such as redlining and low investment in communities of color, has molded the neighborhoods we have now. Tree policy is a part of that, says Tim Porter, the city of Charlotte’s urban forester.
“There are parts of Charlotte that historically had lower tree canopy,” said Porter. “Like major cities in the U.S., one of the issues we have is that those are areas historically with high populations of people of color, low-income areas.”
Think of trees like diligent, leafy municipal workers, minus the salary and benefits. They provide many services, such as erosion control, stormwater mitigation, and heat reduction. These services also evolve as the tree matures, making the preservation of the existing canopy paramount.
“It can take them 15 to 20 years to be part of the canopy,” said Myers, referring to the young trees they planted the year before.
Once the trees are established, they can bolster climate resiliency in the neighborhoods that experience flooding and extreme heat, which is only going to become more important as the climate warms.
“50% tree canopy is great,” Porter said. “But if there are areas where people are living, working [and] socializing that have low canopy, then we’re not really achieving what we could be.”
The city of Charlotte will begin updating its 2021 Tree Canopy Action Plan early next year. The plan will still focus on improving the quantity of canopy coverage, but Porter said the city is interested in tapping into “pockets of community-driven interest” — which could mean a shift from the citywide percentage goal to a more localized, neighborhood-specific approach.
