On Friday, April 21, West End Tree Boston will oversee the planting of another eight trees in the West End of Boston. The trees are donated and planted by a team from Integrated Marketing Solutions & Agency Services | dentsu as part of their second annual One Day for Change volunteer day. This is the second year that dentsu has donated trees to the neighborhood and provided employee volunteers to get them in the ground.
One Day for Change is a day when all of the 40,000+ dentsu employees around the world are encouraged to join local efforts to be a global force for good. Offices across the globe partner with local charities to make a difference. Last year the theme was Sustainability, this year it is Nature and a Circular Economy.
Last year West End Tree Boston and dentsu partnered to plant the first five trees and survey another 85. Thoreau Path is ‘owned’ by all of the private abutters, but the city has an easement down the center. When the path was planned 60 years ago, when they razed the neighborhood, no plans were put in place to care for the trees, specifically those that line the easement. In the past few years we have lost upwards of 30 60-year-old trees, most over 60′ high. dentsu’s efforts last year and again this year are helping us restore this beautiful path.
The volunteers will also continue to survey and measure the trees along the path as they did last year. Knowing what trees exist in our neighborhood, and finding neighbors to care for them, is critical to protecting the tree canopy in the West End.
By increasing the variety of species along the path with these two years of new plantings, West End Tree Boston now has enough diversity to apply for arboretum status. The goal is to bring visibility to the 200 or so 60-year-old trees along Thoreau Path in the West End of Boston in order to provide them some protection. Boston cannot afford to lose trees of this age and size. ‘Adopters’ will be found to water and care for each of these new trees, as was done with the 10 planted last year. Stephen Schneider from Northeastern University’s Arboretum will be consulting with West End Tree Boston on this project.