This quarter, I worked hard on the Tree Coupon Program, and Grit City Trees. Tree Coupons is a tree planting incentive for Pierce County residents. This season we end up distributing almost 2,500 coupons across the county. It ended up that 939 of these coupons were redeemed amounting to 1,817 trees being planted!
We also complied and summarized the data from this program’s season in coordination with partners like Tacoma Power. Working with GIS we developed a map that showed where each tree would end up planted and how many per address. GIS was the only way to accurately identify where we draw the line between which city and county to determine how the partners split up the cost of the program.

Grit City Trees had just started to have open applications in May. Since then, we have only received a handful of applications but during this time I have been working with non-profit Tacoma Tree Foundation and Pierce Conservation District to organize and promote the program. Together we have devised different marketing methods to apply and divided up the workload to help make this a success. The goal is to focus our marketing/planting efforts in Tacoma’s historically underserved neighborhoods. These areas typically have relatively low tree canopy, so we are focusing efforts into getting trees in the ground here more than anywhere.
In hopes to reach a greater audience, I was able to appear on Q13 news to talk about Grit City Trees. That, and Tacoma Urban Green. The Q13 news segment aired already and we have received some immediate response.
In this quarter, I was able to address the Tacoma Mall Neighborhood Meeting, Tacoma Master Gardeners, and Tacoma Tree Foundation’s tree stewards about the planting incentives. I also continued to host an intern for the Tacoma Public School’s Next Move. Thomas was an asset to the Tree Coupon program and was great to have him fulfill some of the coupon requests.