A Tree-rific Nursery Beautifies an SF Underpass

The Friends of The Urban Forest have been planting and taking care of community trees and gardens in San Francisco since 1981. In fact, these are the green thumbs who grew nearly half of San Francisco’s tree canopy, some 60,000 trees over the last 40 years.

Photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

This fall, a new SF green initiative began that officially celebrated its tree-rific beginnings on November 9th. Standing up for the environment, Friends of The Urban Forest started the city’s first street tree nursery in a vacant patch of SOMA beneath the freeway.

This budding initiative is already linked to various city and state programs, ensuring it’s here to stay. You can find this nursery on 5th Street, snugly situated between Harrison and Bryant streets, unfolding across a 4,000-square-foot space with room to nurture approximately 1,000 street trees, that will one day provide shade and oxygen to our city.

Photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

Friends of The Urban Forest describes the project like this, “New Roots launched in the fall of 2023, and serves transitional-aged youths and adults from communities in the SoMa, Tenderloin, Mission, Excelsior, and Bayview neighborhoods in San Francisco. The program will include five six-month sessions, each with a cohort of four program participants.

New Roots graduates will have opportunities to be promoted into our Green Crew program or other continuing workforce development programs or apprenticeships, as well as support in transitioning into other paid positions through our partnerships with the city and other community-based organizations”.

You’ll be able to see the nursery from the freeway – photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

But this nursery isn’t just about trees; it’s also about giving people a leg up. Overseen by Friends of the Urban Forest in collaboration with Public Works, is designed to offer job training and establish career paths in urban forestry for individuals encountering obstacles in the job market.

This nursery is instrumental in supporting programs like StreetTreeSF, approved by City voters in 2016. StreetTreeSF dedicates an annual budget of $19 million for the maintenance of San Francisco’s extensive network of 125,000 street trees. However, this program didn’t previously support the growth of new trees and this nursery solves that problem.

Gavin Newsom meeting the volunteers – Photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

Friends of The Urban Forrest: “San Francisco is proud that its first-ever Street Tree Nursery innovatively transformed an underutilized parcel in the South of Market into a place that is environmentally sustainable, enjoyable, and effective in creating healthy and vibrant communities,” said Public Works Director Carla Short, a certified arborist by training. “We are excited to be a partner with the State of California to deliver this project.”

Photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

This whole thing got a funding boost, thanks in part to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2022 Clean California initiative. They set aside a whopping $311.7 million for 126 projects to spruce up the state highway system. And here’s the cool part – a staggering 98% of these projects are geared towards giving a facelift to communities that have been historically underserved or left out.

When the nursery opened officially on November 9th, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Mayor London Breed, state and local government officials and community leaders came to celebrate the achievement. While some media has spun the initiative as a convenient way to move the unhoused, Gavin Newsom did not speak directly to the homeless but about the beauty behind the larger impact of these trees. People will look down from the freeway and see trees that eventually could be creating even more beauty in other parts of San Francisco. 

Gavin Newsom opening the nursery – Photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

“This is about the vision of every single person that’s stuck in traffic and looks down on this spot, and has been looking down on this spot for quite literally decades, well before my time here, wondering what the hell is going on,” Newsom told reporters, “that is why we love the idea of a thousand or so trees that will be here, that will be part of this renewal and rebirth of San Francisco.”

“I know folks say, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town,’ That’s true, because it’s true,” Newsom said. “But it’s also true, for months and months and months prior to APEC, we’ve been having different conversations. And we’ve raised the bar of expectation between the city, the county and the state, and our federal partners as well that we all have to do more and do better.”

Creating permanent, affordable housing for our unhoused population is a very real, and incredibly important struggle facing our city, state, and nation.  San Franciso’s APEC conference this month has brought international attention to the city.  Many San Franciscans have noticed how the unhoused have been temporarily swept away from view so that the visiting world leaders, billionaires, and cameras do not have to see them.

Leaving many to question, “What did the city do with our most vulnerable populations?” And why have you moved them just now?  While SF has been begging the city to help and house these people for decades?

A freshly planted tree under the freeway – photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

What is still clear is that EVERYONE in our city benefits from trees, shade, cleaner air, community gardens, and job training programs.  And initiatives like this one are incredibly beneficial to our city.

Street trees are intended for planting in neighborhoods throughout San Francisco. You walk by them every day in SF. Many of the canopies in SF were created using trees planted by the volunteers behind Friends of The Urban Forest. The trees within this nursery space will live in pots until they are ready to be moved to other spaces in and around SF.

Why is this important? Programs like this help support larger environmental initiatives like global warming. California is the 3rd fastest-warming state in our nation. Meanwhile, The City has been losing more trees than it’s been able to plant for quite some time. According to San Francisco Urban Forest Plan, SF already has a pretty sparse canopy as compared to other major cities.  We need friends like this to grow, plant and maintain our community canopies and gardens.

Learn more about the program here: friendsoftheurbanforest.org

Photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest

Photo from Friends of The Urban Forrest