With a beaming smile, Brandon Thompson, an Old West End resident, stopped by the Floyd Street Toledo Tree Nursery and gleefully walked away with an English oak to plant in his yard. 

“When we give trees to people, we try to talk to people about where it is going to be planted and how to take care of it for the first couple years,” said Charlie Johnson, a volunteer with Tree Toledo for seven years. “The first two years is critical,” he said of planting new trees, and said the nonprofit doesn’t give out trees to people who aren’t going to plant them immediately. 

For the past 10 years Tree Toledo has tried to emphasize the importance of trees.

“Most people know the benefits of [trees] like cooling air temperatures and things like that,” said Michael Szuberla, a volunteer with Tree Toledo and the mastermind behind the Floyd Street Toledo Tree Nursery. 

“There have been studies on sleep, on full population health, on reducing, minimizing the impacts of poverty. Trees have just incredible impacts,” Mr. Szuberla said, citing a 2012 article from Urban Forestry & Urban Greening by David J. Nowak and Eric J. Greenfield showing positive benefits of trees but warning of declining rates of trees in urban areas.  

Since Mr. Szuberla was a child living in the Old West End, he said the total number of trees in the neighborhood had declined. He said he is trying to turn that around with the tree nursery.

“Some parts of Toledo have like a 45 percent [canopy] coverage,” he said, and shared that he used the data from treeequityscore.org where individuals can look up specific areas of canopy coverage with data from American Forests, a conservation nonprofit formed in 1875.

A good percent of canopy coverage for urban spaces, according the website, is 40 percent.

“The neighborhood we're in right now [the Old West End] is around 20 percent [canopy coverage],” Mr. Szuberla said, and specifically, according to the Tree Equity Score, Floyd Street’s area had a 17 percent canopy coverage rating near the tree nursery. 

In light of the benefits of trees and their decline Mr. Szuberla put together plans for the tree nursery and also applied for funding. 

“Collingwood Presbyterian donates the land that we're on,” he began, “and around this time last year, we got a grant from Toledo Community Foundation and the Toledo Rotary.”

The $10,000 grant Mr. Szuberla referenced “really allowed us to plan for the year and be ambitious,” he said.

Hundreds of young trees were planted in potting containers and lined in rows inside a picturesque picket fence area covered in mulch with a monarch butterfly streamer and a sign reading “Floyd Street Tree Nursery.”

Adam Cassi, who was at the rededication of the tree nursery on behalf of Rotary Club of Toledo, said a lot of people apply for grants, but on behalf of the environmental committee for Rotary, he said, “Trees check a lot of boxes.”  Off the top of his head, he said that trees clean water, clean the air, and slow down warming in cities. 

“We built all of this with the grant funds,” Mr. Szuberla said, and added that the tree nursery was completely built by volunteers. Even a Bobcat operator donated time as a volunteer to help create the tree nursery.

Some of the youngest volunteers were present for the recent rededication of the tree nursery after it had been mostly finished, including two of Patricia Okoyomo’s children, Isaiah and Priscilla. 

“It's fun to them,” Ms. Okoyomo said of her kids, who donate their time each week. “They just get back from school, come home, and go to church” to help with the tree nursery. 

The kids mostly spread mulch and organize plants and said they enjoy their time volunteering. 

“I just like being around the greenery and seeing how things grow,” Priscilla Okoyomo, 12, said of her experience with Tree Toledo. 

Altogether volunteers with Tree Toledo logged 800 hours giving out trees and installing the fence, a work station, picnic tables, a propagation station, and an irrigation system at the Floyd Street Toledo Tree Nursery. 

Tree giveaways were done this past year at farmers markets, and any tree giveaways outside of famers’ markets were communicated through an email chain. The costs associated with potting and taking care of a young tree can be more than buying the actual tree, and for these reasons Mr. Johnson said Tree Toledo likes to be hands on in the planting and education of the people it gives trees to.

Members of Tree Toledo lamented not having younger volunteers who could create a better online presence for the organization.

“We gave out about 700 trees this year,” Mr. Szuberla said. “We'd like to know what ZIP codes we're reaching.”

A statistic repeated throughout the rededication of the tree nursery was pulled from the same 2012 Nowak and Greenfield study, which said 75 percent to 90 percent of urban trees are planted by private citizens.

“The quality of our urban forest, 75 percent of it at least, is what we're doing with our yards,” Mr. Szuberla said, and a few moments later volunteers helped Mr. Thompson pick out the English oak for his personal contribution to that 75 percent.  

“We want citizens to have trees in their yard, shading the sidewalk, soaking up the storm water,” Mr. Szuberla said. 

With the tree nursery nearing completion Mr. Szuberla estimated the organization would have room for at least 2,000 young trees, the bulk of which are native species.

First Published October 12, 2024, 5:11 p.m.