Santa Monica Urban Forest Master Plan Task Force - City of Santa ...

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Presentation by Ad Hoc
Subcommittee on Tree Selection
Susan McCarthy, Peter Jensen,
Dryden Helgoe & Grace Phillips
Santa Monica Urban
Forest Master Plan Task
Force
June 2, 2011

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TASK FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE
• Susan McCarthy: former City Manager, Santa
Monica
• Peter Jensen: Landscape Architect; Certified
Arborist
• Grace Phillips: Task Force Member; Landscape
Designer; Urban Planning Master’s Candidate,
UCLA
• Dryden Helgoe: Landscape Designer, Recreation
& Parks Commission Liaison

+ Why street trees?
• PRAGMATIC REASONS: Allan Jacobs, a famous urban
designer, wrote:
• “If you want to make a major positive impact on an existing
street and had a limited budget, you might well recommend
planting trees as the way to get the most impact for your
money.”
• Street trees increase adjacent property values
• AESTHETIC REASONS: Trees are “gifts to the street”
• They create a sense of place, an image of order, a unifying
element
• They hide overhead wires, reduce the monotony of concrete and
asphalt
• They attenuate noise

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• HEALTH REASONS
• They cool and clean the air
• They protect pedestrians from traffic lanes
• They provide shade
• …these are just some of the reasons we love
street trees!

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THE TASK FORCE MISSION
•“…to ensure that the environmental,
social, aesthetic and economic benefits of
a healthy community forest are available
to Santa Monica residents and visitors for
generations to come...
•…the Master Plan will guide the
conservation and enhancement of tree
canopy coverage over the entire City…”

+ START WITH WHAT IS THERE

+ Appreciate what is working
• Mature, healthy canopy in large parts of the city
• Beauty of both monocultures (street planted with one kind of
tree only) and mixed stands (street planted with more than
one species of tree)
• Benefits of a good canopy – shade, sense of scale, specific
character, rain water absorption, air quality, habitat (hawks’
nest in a ficus tree on Delaware!)
• Desirability of streets with beautiful canopies – nice street
trees make houses more valuable
• Street trees for way-finding: we use how streets look to
navigate the city and find where we are going (“Look at this
gorgeous allee of Casuarinas -- I must be on 26 th Street!”)

+ GET COMMUNITY INPUT
• Task Force implemented outreach efforts through:
• Citywide community workshops
• 30,000 door hanger questionnaires
• On-line survey

+ Doorhanger Survey/Workshop Announcement
Distribution
• 30,000 doorhangers citywide
Sustainability
• 100% post-consumer recycled material
• soy-based inks
• locally printed
• distributed by city maintenance crews on foot
Return
• nearly 300 surveys returned (1%)
• ~75% of attendance at workshops

+ Online Survey
Hosted by surveymonkey.com:
• Publicized through
• Santa Monica Daily Press
• Santa Monica Mirror
• Citywide door hanger distribution
• Link from smgov.net
Response:
• Total started survey: 236
• Total completed survey: 223 (94.5%)
• Many comments & replies

+ Community Workshops

+ Table Discussion Groups

+ What neighborhood do you live in?

+ What type of residence do you live in?

Considering the following characteristics of street trees,
please tell us what is most important to you.

If you could choose the type of street tree for your
street, what would you prefer?

+ Profile/Combination Results from Community Input
(Listed in order of Preference)
1. Broadleaved Evergreen Monoculture
2. Broadleaved Evergreen & Deciduous
3. Narrow leaved Evergreen & Deciduous
4. Deciduous Monoculture
5. Combination of narrow leaved Evergreen Species
6. Broadleaved Evergreen & Deciduous with Similar Form
7. Broadleaved Evergreen & narrow leaved Evergreen
8. Combination of multiple evergreen Species
9. Palm Monoculture (compact spacing)
10. Palm & Deciduous
11. Palm & narrow leaved evergreen
12. Combination of Palm Species
13. Palm Monoculture (wide spacing)
14. Palm & Broadleaved Evergreen

Community Input - Top 3 Choices
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1 st Choice – Broad leaved Evergreen Monoculture
2 nd Choice – Broad leaved Evergreen & Deciduous
3 rd Choice – Narrow leaved Evergreen & Deciduous

+ What are our urban forest issues?
• Dependence on too few species in the “Top 15” – one disease
could decimate the forest
• Age – trees nearing the end of their lifespan (Prunus
carolinianas planted in the 60s, Bottle trees on Pearl Street)
• Disease – various diseases are attacking certain species
(Pittosporum family is dying from xylella, carried by the glassywing
sharp shooter; oleander leaf scorch killing oleanders;
fusarium infecting Canary Island Date Palms )
• Lack of unity in plantings
• Some streets are underplanted (the street needs more and/or
bigger trees)
• Some streets are overplanted (trees are too big for grow space)
• CANOPY EQUITY: Due to how city parkways were laid out, some
parts of town have far less canopy coverage than others

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The Poster Tree for Urban Forest Renewal

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OUR TASK:
to boldly go where no other ad hoc tree selection subcommittee has gone before…
•To go through the city street
by street and often block by block
and consider all current conditions
of tree sites
•To take as many variables
and as much information into
account when selecting tree
species for the Long Range Master
Plan

+ Our task:
•STEP ONE – define segments
• Stretches of single streets with consistent parkway sizes
that are visually continuous are treated as a single site (e.g.,
15 th Street from Montana Avenue to Washington Avenue)
•STEP TWO – refine lists
• Review and revise List of Trees from Artecho, including
scouring all sources for possible new additions (Santa
Barbara tree lists, native CA tree lists, tree experts in the
region, etc.)
• What species are over-represented in the city? How many
of each in the Top 15 do we already have?
• Lists are sorted by parkway size, alphabetically, and by
mature size

+ STEP THREE –
analyze site + conditions
• What are the site conditions?
• How wide is the parkway?
• How wide is the street? Narrow streets can benefit from
smaller trees, while wider ones generally need larger
trees
• What is the above-ground grow space? Are there
adjacent two-story buildings? What shape of tree would
be best in this site? Vase shaped, broad canopy, upright
column?
• What is the soil like? Is it sandy or solid clay?
• What are the weather conditions specifically for this site?
Is it in the fog belt?
• How is the street used? Is there a lot of truck traffic?
(effect on canopy)

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STEP THREE cont.
• Is there a lot of foot traffic on the sidewalks and in the
parkway? (effect on roots through compaction, effect on
sidewalks and on pruning practices)
• Types of trees currently in place
• Effect of current plantings:
• Are the current trees thriving? If not, why not?
• Is there a mature canopy in place? Is it a mixed canopy or
a monoculture?
• Do the street trees constitute a significant palm allee?
• Does this part of Santa Monica have good street trees?
Are some streets better than others? What has been
successful and what hasn’t?
• Number of trees – are there vacancies?
• What is the effect for the resident, the pedestrian, cyclist
or the driver?

+ •STEP FOUR – choose a tree!
• Taking size of street and parkway, shape of grow space,
microclimate and existing trees into account, how can
we improve the canopy on this street?
• For some streets, this means leave it as it is, and
replace any dying trees with the current selection
• Some streets have numerous tree species, with some
thriving and some languishing
• We designate the most appropriate canopy for the
particular street, either as a monoculture or a mixed
planting, and introduce one or more new types of
trees
• If we are going to add or change the street tree, we
work off our exhaustive lists of trees that will thrive in
Zone 24

+ STEP FOUR cont.
• Avoid using trees in the Top 15 unless they are
already established on that street
• We look for opportunities to introduce trees that
are underused as street trees (Hello, Quillaja
saponaria!)
• We choose trees that will not require lots of water
once established in case the parkway in not
irrigated
• …and lastly, is the tree available? Are nurseries
growing it or can they contract grow it?

What are the options for street trees when
there is no parkway?

+ SPECIAL CASES
• Tiny Parkways & Monolithic Curbs (where there
is no parkway, and the curb is attached to the
sidewalk)
• Earmark these sites for the Task Force to look at,
proposing that we recommend infrastructure
changes
• Can the city widen the parkway?
• Can we create a Green Street in the future? (Oak
Street between Euclid + 16 th Street, 16 th Street
north of Marine, 14 th Street between Hill and Oak,
etc.)
• Can we recommend that the city cut tree wells?

+ SPECIAL CASES
• Air Quality Management District and US Forest Service
Project
• City Forester and staff have identified sites in the city
that meet the requirements of the US Forest Service
• We work from a short list of California-native,
drought-tolerant, low-emission trees that AQMD
furnished
• We have suggested a few additions to the list and
have been successful in increasing the options
• We specify trees for the sites that we think would most
enhance the beauty of the city street and are most
suitable for the site

+ SPECIAL CASES
• Palm Allées
• Where they delineate heavily-travelled commercial
corridors (Santa Monica Blvd., Wilshire Blvd, 26 th St.
section)
• Where historic photographs and records show that the
existing trees date from the earliest period of
development of the neighborhood or are similar
replacements of the original trees
• Where the majority of the street trees are the same
species or a species with a similar form
• Where the placement and form of the mature trees frame
and preserve a striking view
• Where the mature scale of the species is well-suited to the
street width and parkway size
• Where the replacement trees of the same species or
species with a similar form are both available from
growers and available at a price point that falls within the
norm for replacement street trees
• Georgina and Marguerita from Ocean to 14 th are already
designated: Jubaea chilensis (Ocean to 7 th ) and
Washingtonia robusta (7 th to 14 th )

+ Happy ficus trees in wide
parkways

+ Ficus in 4’ parkway and wider
Trees can tolerate root pruning
Trimmed ficus roots
Yale Street during widening

+ Ficus in 2’-3’ Parkway:
Root cutting for sidewalk repair can lead to decline
American with Disabilities Act requires smooth sidewalks
Roots close to trunk must be cut
Trees killed by sooty canker

+ SPECIAL CASES
• Significant Allées, cont.
• Ficus Allées in small (2’-3’) parkways lift
sidewalks, and are threatened by root pruning
required to repair sidewalks
• Ficus Allées in medium (4’-6’) parkways uplift
sidewalks but can tolerate root pruning better,
don’t die as often
• Ficus Allées in large (6’ +) parkways can grow to
size without uplifting sidewalks
• How do you feel about the small parkway ficus
streets? We need your input.

+ SPECIAL CASES
• FREEWAY ADJACENT STREETS
• To offset the proximity to the freeway and its pollutants, allowances
were made on streets near the freeway to plant trees with larger,
better-filtering canopies.
• Treescape on the left is preferable to the one on the right.

+ SPECIAL CASES
•Future Projects
• Expo Line areas, Transit Mall area etc.
• Caltrans areas – not currently under SM’s
jurisdiction but may be in the near future:
Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica Blvd.
• Depending on circumstances, we either make
recommendations or adhere to approved
designs

+ SPECIAL CASES
•Replacement Tree Size
•In situations where residents desire larger
trees whose cost would exceed the City’s
standard replacement cost, those
residents may be given the opportunity to
cover the incremental cost of
replacement.

+ Where do we go from here?
• Review & incorporate community feedback
• Propose infrastructure improvements where appropriate
• Work on implementation guidelines
• Request funds to implement the Master Plan
• ….get planting in our empty tree sites so we can enjoy the
Santa Monica Urban Forest
•It’s been a thoughtful and exciting process so
far, and we look forward to your comments!