New trees help neighbors breathe easier in West Indy
INDIANAPOLIS (MIRROR INDY) — Trees can transform a neighborhood into a shady haven. Besides producing oxygen, trees cool down a hot summer day, help reduce energy costs, improve property values and help reduce crime by fostering more social communities.
But around the country, including Indianapolis, urban trees have mostly been planted in areas where people have higher incomes, leaving out communities like West Indianapolis, where 35% of the population lives below the poverty line and only about 10% of the neighborhood has tree cover.
Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, a nonprofit that seeks to improve the environment, wants to change that. The nonprofit has identified 10 areas around the city that need trees the most. Half are on the west side of Indianapolis, including portions of West Indy, Haughville and neighborhoods northwest of Speedway. Other areas throughout the city include Warren Park on the far east side, Eastgate, Southport and a portion of Mapleton-Fall Creek.
About two dozen Keep Indianapolis Beautiful staff and volunteers recently helped plant dozens of cherrybark oak trees in a portion of one of those areas, a West Indianapolis neighborhood and a public right-of-way along West Morris Street.
Keep Indianapolis Beautiful chose those areas because they were identified as having a high need for capital improvements, because they have very few trees, and because the nonprofit has not been very involved in this part of the city.
“Broadly speaking, we want to take resources and put them where people need them,” said Karl Selm, Keep Indianapolis Beautiful’s senior geographic information system analyst.
Staff members taught volunteers how to prepare the ground and best practices for planting the trees, like digging a bucket-shaped hole, using a knife to free the tree’s roots and finding the taproot.
Volunteers, including siblings Nora, Margot and Jack Michalisko, planted trees with a little help from their mother, Desirae. Jack, 10, helped trim roots while Margot and Nora, 8, helped place the roughly 5-foot tree into its hole.
“They’re out of school for parent teacher conferences, and I figured, we might as well go do something to make this place better,” said Desirae.
Students from Butler University and IU Indianapolis also helped plant trees. Many were there to supplement the knowledge they gained by taking a class called “The World of Plants.”
“We get extra credit for the class, but that’s not the only reason we’re here,” said Butler freshman Ella Huth, 18. “We like trees, and we’re learning how they grow.”
Blanca De La Cruz is one of the neighbors who received a tree from Keep Indianapolis Beautiful. She has lived on the corner of Berwick Avenue and Lambert Street for about eight years, and said the new tree, when fully grown, could help reduce the amount of dust that flies into the neighborhood from nearby businesses.
“It’s going to be helpful, and it’s going to look beautiful,” De La Cruz said in an interview conducted in Spanish.
Keep Indianapolis Beautiful said it will help maintain the newly planted trees for three years with the help of the Indianapolis Department of Public Works. That’s important, because trees need water and care as their roots establish, especially when we have long summer droughts like this year.
In October, the city of Indianapolis secured a $12-million contract with the U.S. Forest Service to improve urban trees in Indianapolis over the next five years. That will include tree maintenance, including pruning and stump removal, and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful will plant 4,500 new trees across the city.
Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @heyEnriqueSaenz.