Community Forestry: Websites

Audience: people who plant trees in public landscapes, such as streets and parks. Much of the advice is also useful to those who plant trees around homes and businesses.

Telephone or drop-in service for plant diagnosis.

This site was created as a place to learn about Pennsylvania’s trees, how to care for them, and tap into tree expertise across the Commonwealth.

Pennsylvania Community Forests (PCF) is a nonprofit organization made up of people who want to improve community forests and green spaces. Includes profiles of successful community forestry stories; benefits of trees; and extensive list of publications and resources. While targeted toward Pennsylvania communities, much information is valuable to tree stewards living elsewhere.

PhillyTreeMap is a web-based map database of trees in the greater 13-county, 3-state Philadelphia region.

PHS’s Gold Medal Plant Award program recognizes trees, shrubs and woody vines of outstanding merit. These plants are evaluated and chosen for their superb eye-appeal, performance, and hardiness in the growing region of Zones 5-7. Many winners are hardy in a much broader geographic range. Search or browse the woody plants in the Gold Medal Plant database.

Recommended street tree list, tree care, builder's guide to planting trees.

Environmental non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing Pittsburgh’s vitality by restoring and protecting city trees.

Responding to an alarming trend of the loss of trees in Pennsylvania’s metropolitan areas, TreeVitalize is a public-private partnership to help restore tree cover, educate citizens about planting trees as an act of caring for our environment, and build capacity among local governments to understand, protect and restore their urban trees.

Volunteers in Philadelphia's University City district plant and tend hundreds of street trees and enhance public green spaces, contributing thousands of hours in service to the community. A model program for colleges wanting to become anchor institutions for greening and sustainable development in their communities.

Created by Penn State and the USDA Forest Service, with production assistance from the Chicago Botanic Garden, this site consists of three sections: deciduous trees, deciduous shrubs, and conifers, all suitable for urban areas, and complete with images and plant portraits.

Tips on how to sustain and fund urban and community forestry projects.

A national organization focused on the needs of those engaged in urban forestry. See case studies from Wilmington, DE, Houston, TX, Davis, CA, Indianapolis, IN.

Advocates the benefits of rural and urban trees, good science, and sound policy. Has a Tree Doctor Q&A service.

Helps to promote tree care and conservation and to educate people on tree issues.

Provides state-specific "Call before You Dig" contact infomation.

Quantifies benefits and costs for representative trees in the Atlantic Coastal Plain region (North Carolina to East Texas).

Resources on tree care, tree stewardship, tree inventory how-tos, and urban forestry planning.

Clearinghouse for information to help communities manage their urban trees.

What kind of trees and shrubs can be safely planted in dog parks? This is one of the questions addressed in this master's thesis.

National organization provides teacher training to promote youth environmental projects.

Forest heath protection topics include identification and evaluation of insect and disease problems, provision of resource materials and management recommendations in forests and nurseries, training in hazard tree management, and assistance with major forest pest control projects.

Benefits of trees, value of trees, tree selection, planting and care information; includes searchable database of certified arborists.

NeighborWoods is KIB's urban forestry effort to strategically plant trees throughout Indianapolis. Our goal is to plant 100,000 by 2017. More than 18,000 trees have been planted since we announced the program in 2006.

Quantifies benefits and costs for typical trees for the Midwest.

The Tree Benefit Calculator allows anyone to make a simple estimation of the benefits individual street-side trees provide. This tool is based on i-Tree’s street tree assessment tool called STRATUM. With inputs of location, species and tree size, users will get an understanding of the environmental and economic value trees provide on an annual basis.

Quantifies benefits and costs for representative trees in the Northern California Coast region.

How, when, and how much to prune.

Provides information, research and networking for people working in urban and community forestry.

Self-guided tutorial (uses Adobe Flash) on best pruning practices.

Not just for woody plants grown in Connecticut. Search by hardiness zone to find plants hardy in your area. Browse by common name or Latin name. Search page contains many filters so you can refine your search and narrow it to the ornamental traits you are looking for in plants, matched with site characteristics.

Our research mission is to understand how urban forests and their management affect environmental quality, and to develop tools and management guidelines to enhance urban natural resources stewardship such that environmental quality and human health are sustained in urban and urbanizing regions.

Supports projects and research related to a diverse array of urban and community forestry issues related to climate change, urban sustainability, environmental and sociological benefits of urban trees and parks, and more.

Are you looking for information on how urban trees improve air quality? Looking for studies on children’s perceptions of trees and nature? Do you want to know how to launch a successful street tree inventory? What about information on the benefits of parks and open spaces in communities? It’s all here in TreeSearch, a web database of publications by research and development scientists in the United States Forest Service. The database contains over 30,000 publications.