Words and photos by Sophie Vaughan
Keep Akron Beautiful’s Planting Change: 100K Trees for Akron initiative launched in May 2024 with a community kick-off event at Hardesty Park, with food and art vendors, craft stations, food trucks and a white oak sapling giveaway.
Keep Akron Beautiful’s website states that Akron’s tree coverage has declined from 40% to 34% in the last decade, and the tree canopy is projected to decrease to 30% by 2040. Akron loses 6,540 trees annually. The Planting Change campaign has an ambitious goal to plant 100,000 trees by 2034 to help restore the city’s green canopy and maintain a balanced ecosystem.
Keep Akron Beautiful Flowerscape Director Leah Heiser says that Akron is losing tree canopy coverage at such a fast rate due to a lack of tree replacement when trees start to decline. She says that the areas with the most need for improvement are South and East Akron.
“People are little tree-cut happy,” Heiser says. “We’re so quick to remove trees when we’re inconvenienced…whether it be we don’t want to pick up the leaves, we’re concerned about picking up branches—that little bit of maintenance.”
Heiser says she has noticed that in her neighborhood, people don’t want to deal with trees.
“They’re kind of missing the bigger picture,” she says.
Heiser explains that trees are a huge factor in mental and physical health. She says that dense tree canopy helps decrease heart rate, reduces ADHD, improves mental wellness. She details how a healthy and robust canopy also has environmental, social and economic benefits.
“Trees are really important for our community because they help sequester carbon; they help reduce stormwater runoff; they help prevent the island effect, which is what we’re seeing right now in southeast Akron,” Heiser says.
Heiser says that increased property value speaks to the economic benefits of trees: homes with larger trees tend to sell more easily, and the larger trees help with heating and cooling costs by providing shade and windbreak.
On the social aspects of a thriving tree canopy, Heiser says: “Communities that have a higher tree canopy tend to have more pride and togetherness in their neighborhoods than areas that don’t have trees.”
Unfortunately, convincing people to plant new trees can prove challenging. All too often, homeowners even resist free tree plantings – such as street trees that are planted in tree lawns around the city, which the City of Akron plants and maintains at no cost to the homeowner. Tree planting appeals often center around homeowners’ concerns regarding maintaining trees and raking leaves.
“Somewhere along the lines, we decided that having a beautiful green lawn was a standard of beauty, whereas leaving [leaves] on the lawn helps promote habitat, helps build soil quality,” Heiser says. “So for instance, in my gardens, I leave the leaves. My perennials grow around them, giving them all summer to biodegrade. And so, I don’t spend money on soil, I don’t spend money on leaf removal.”
Heiser believes that there’s an educational element involved with this strategy. Leaving piles of twigs helps the beneficial insect population, which, in turn, will help the native bird population.
“I want to get out of that ‘keeping up with the Joneses mentality’ — we need to look at beautification differently, in a way that it’s not just that standard, idealistic, beautiful yard,” says Heiser. She would like to see people start thinking about how they can provide multiple functions, changing their minds about beauty.
“What does it mean to have a beautiful yard?” Heiser asks. “Maybe it means to have a healthy yard that serves not only our community or ourselves, but also our local wildlife.”
Heiser says that this wiil be an ongoing campaign, and encourages Akron residents to stay tuned to Keep Akron Beautiful’s social media pages for upcoming events, like tree plantings and educational opportunities.
“We need to redefine our standards of a beautiful landscape,” says Heiser.
Visit Keep Akron Beautiful here