Keeping the Green in Greenville: The Civics Lessons of Trees

When Hurricane Helene toppled centuries-old white oaks while sparing seemingly fragile maples, it revealed hidden truths about resilience beneath our feet. As Greenville recovers from two historic environmental disasters, TreesUpstate's Aaron Davis shares a surprising statistic: despite our "green" reputation, Greenville's 36% tree canopy lags behind Atlanta and Charlotte's 45%. Discover how an 1872 newspaper editor united a post-Civil War nation by planting one million trees in a single day - a tradition that predates Earth Day by nearly a century. Between fallen giants and forest fires, learn why meeting your neighbors with shovels in hand might be our most powerful act of civic optimism for generations we'll never meet.

Links:

TreesUpstate

South Carolina Forestry Commission

Arbor Day

Earth Day

Transcript

Katy Smith:
[0:02] Keeping the green in Greenville has been a rallying cry for the many residents concerned about sprawling development and the loss of tree canopy in our region. Trees are not just front of mind for today's guest. Trees are in the name and the reason for being. I'm Katie Smith with Greater Good Greenville, and on this episode of Simple Civics Greenville County, I talk with the Executive Director of Trees Upstate, Aaron Davis. Since 2005, Trees Upstate, formerly known as Trees Greenville, has planted, promoted, and protected trees in our region. This is a really timely episode as it comes on the heels of both Hurricane Helene and the largest wildfire in our state's history, both of which destroyed many of the Upstate's old trees. And we are airing it during the week of both Earth Day and Arbor Day, which celebrate protecting the environment and planting trees. Of course, the topic of trees is evergreen, ha ha. So whenever you're listening, there's wisdom here for you. Aaron, thanks so much for being with us today to talk about trees.

Aaron Davis:
[1:03] It's great to be with you. Thank you.

Katy Smith:
[1:05] Well, this episode is airing on the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, when people all over the world celebrate environmental protection and raise awareness to protect the planet's natural resources for our kids and our grandkids. And as you know better than anyone, trees are heroes in this effort to protect our planet and just make our life better every day. So I want to start with a kind of silly, simple question, but it's fundamental. Why do you think everyone listening should care about trees?

Aaron Davis:
[1:33] Well, I think when you talk about Earth Day, Earth Day started around 1970, and it was a day that we could celebrate across the world, not just here in America. But if we go back even farther, there is a holiday also called Arbor Day, which happens right around the same time as Earth Day. Back in 1872, Arbor Day actually started. So there is a history and a tradition and a heritage of planting trees here in this country well before we have a celebration day called Earth Day. If you put yourself in the shoes of someone who is in 1872, this is directly after the Civil War.

Aaron Davis:
[2:11] Americans don't trust one another. They're worried about a future war. They have seen not only them killing themselves and their brothers and their sisters, they have seen environmental degradation like they never knew. At this time, you had a lot of settlement. You had a lot of pioneers that were cutting down every single tree that they found. And only through heroic efforts did we even save the giant redwoods that are out in California. There's this gentleman named Julius Sterling Morton, who was a newspaper guy who came from New York and he had moved to Nebraska. He looked around Nebraska, he bought some property, and he realized what he missed the most was trees. He didn't know how much he missed them. In New York, he had trees. They actually had rules around trees in New York, and he decided he was going to do something about it. So he started what is now known as Arbor Day in Nebraska, got the legislature together, and on that first Arbor Day, Nebraskans planted one million trees. And this is 1872.

Katy Smith:
[3:16] That's amazing.

Aaron Davis:
[3:18] Yeah. And the holiday became so popular that every other state by 1896, every other state in America had adopted their own Arbor Day except for Delaware. Now, I don't know why Delaware didn't. But the point being, here you had a divided country. You had a country that had seen the hubris of cutting down all the trees, of not caring about the environment. To go from every state legislature caring about trees, about the planting of trees.

Aaron Davis:
[3:51] Regardless of their political persuasion. You can read all about the battles that happened in politics during this time, but yet it's good to remember there was a day called Arbor Day where everyone came together and planted trees. So trees are in our fabric. They're in our institutions. They're something we've always really appreciated ever since 1872. During that time, you wouldn't have had anything talking about the environment. And then later, 10 years after Arbor Day, you have the more spiritual movement of the John Muir's and the Walden Pond and Emerson. You have a lot of these great transcendentalists who make nature to be a spiritual thing. But at the time, this was it, right? And so Arbor Day was quickly picked up, and this is great for civics, because Arbor Day was quickly picked up after the legislatures did it to be a school holiday. And so when I go out to events and I talk with people, I talk with like an older group, like if I'm at a Rotary Club or an Alliance Club, and I say, raise your hand if you planted a tree when you were young at your school. And almost every hand goes up.

Aaron Davis:
[4:55] You do that to a younger group of people now, the hands don't go up. All right. So this is something that generationally we are somewhat losing, but places like Trees Upstate are trying to continue that. But even no matter your political persuasion, no matter who you are, what you find is that people remember planting that tree and they love planting trees because of that memory that they had as a kid. So this is the importance of trees. This is the why trees. It's because people love them. All right. Also because of the great benefits they give us. So we can go on and on about the benefits. Put trees on the street, speeding goes down. The breathing gets better. You have less asthma. Hospital stays are reduced by an average of about a day if the person sitting in the hospital bed can actually see green spaces. Like all this is research and we know trees are really great for us. And so it's something everyone can get around, but it's also something that is not pushed or out in the culture as much as it may have been historically. And we're coming back to that.

Katy Smith:
[6:01] That's great. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about how Trees Upstate makes a strong tree canopy? What are the things that you do?

Aaron Davis:
[6:10] So what we do as an organization is we plant trees, park schools and neighborhoods, and we work with volunteers to do it. So over our, let's say, 20 years of existence, we've had over 12,000 volunteers who have come out and got a shovel and they've helped us plant trees. We're planting trees in front yards. The City of Greenville has a program right now where they have a mitigation bank that if developers have cut down trees, they have to pay money. And we're taking that money and we're planting trees in the front yards of low to moderate income residents. So we're trying to find ways where we can increase this canopy. Now, I do want to say one thing on this.

Aaron Davis:
[6:52] In the City of Greenville, the city limits, 87% of our tree canopy coverage is on private property. So we are a state that really loves our private property. We really love to be able to have independence of what we do with our land. And so, so much of what is done, like you could say, well, yeah, the city or the county is going to plant trees in every potential planting area they possibly can, but yet so much of it is on private property. So one of our goals as an organization is to inform people about the amount of tree canopy coverage that we do have as a percent. And one of the surprising things we found is that both Atlanta and Charlotte have a higher percentage of tree canopy coverage than us. So, for example, they both have 45% tree canopy coverage, the City of Greenville has 36%, and the County of Greenville has 38%. And so it really gives us a goal to look towards because these areas had grown really fast at one point in time, and they did the right things to put in the right rules and the right awareness to plant more trees in their areas, and it's something we can aspire to.

Katy Smith:
[8:03] It is such an astonishing figure, but it's also encouraging that there are things we can do. It's so striking that here as we approach Earth Day and Arbor Day, we have had two historic tree events. First, Hurricane Helene, which toppled so many trees, which we can still see lying down in yards and in parks and sides of streets. And then wildfires here in Greenville County and Pickens County that have had a huge impact on our forests and on trees. So I'm curious, what has Trees Upstate been doing about those things and what can we expect next for our forests and our tree canopy?

Aaron Davis:
[8:40] Yeah, so we have had two historic events, the largest wildfire in state history and also Hurricane Helene where we lost a large amount of trees. I often get asked, what percentage of canopy do you think we've lost? And I've heard different things from different people. At this point, no one knows. There hasn't been flyover data that has said exactly what percentage, but I've heard anywhere from 1% to 5% of our trees lost. Okay, so when you're talking about already somewhat lower numbers, that could be a problem. What I've found is, you know, as I'm talking with donors and supporters, like the supporters of Trees Upstate have come through and said, you know, we still believe in trees. But there are so many individual stories where we have complete understanding if someone says, you know, I don't want that large tree that might come into my bedroom. And we are completely understanding of everyone's individual story. As a collective, as a group, as a community, we want to keep promoting trees. We know things that make trees less risky. Now, the only way you don't have a risky tree is if you don't plant a tree at all, right? There's always going to be some risk, but the benefits of the community are much larger than anything that, any risk you might have. And no one can predict what cataclysmic event might happen in the future. We really promote tree care.

Aaron Davis:
[9:59] Every five years or so, you should have your trees pruned. You should have some of the thing that made those trees like a wind sail when the hurricane came through. Just to go back on that, like why did so many trees fail? Because I know people are, I get that question all the time. You had an event where the ground was saturated. You had about 10 to 12 inches of water.

Aaron Davis:
[10:20] And the trees, the large trees that we saw fall typically did not have large bases. So the shocking thing to most people is why did we lose so many white oaks? Why did white oaks go down? We've never seen this happen before. White oaks don't actually have a large base at roots. So when they're sitting in this soupy soil that really had just turned to mush, they had big acorns, fruit on their trees. They still had leaves on the trees. It acted like a wind sail. And we saw those white oaks actually take out other types of trees. But then you look at like a red maple and a red maple has a very aggressive root system that will search out water and will go much farther and we didn't see many red maples down. You know, if we look at it statistically, places that had their trees pruned did better. Not as many trees fell. And one of the recommendations we're getting from arborists now is they're putting an application of root grower on the roots so that we teach the roots to grow and worry less about how tall that tree gets. That tree is already tall enough. Let's actually get the roots to spread out. So they are applying this root grow formula that teaches the roots to give us a better base. The fires that happen is also a huge tragedy. One of the things we have to worry about the most after a fire is the amount of erosion and sediment that can come if you have a big storm after you've lost all this canopy coverage.

Aaron Davis:
[11:47] So the South Carolina Forestry Commission will go and dig ditches to try to create places to stop erosion and they'll start planting trees. So planting trees is the solution when you lose trees. It will take a while for them to grow back. I mean, right now you've already got some ferns and grasses growing back. They're very resilient through a fire. And then a year from now you'll see some shrubs, you'll see insects and birds as soon as now, because some of that, that dense foliage has been taken out, but insects and birds and small mammals will come back. In five years, you'll see large animals coming back in the greater the brush coverage. And then by 10 years, you'll see some trees that almost look mature depending on the species. Some people ask, will kudzu take over this entire area? That might be a question, right? Will invasive species now come in and we'll never have trees here again.

Aaron Davis:
[12:45] And that, you know, this is an area managed by the state park system. I don't expect we'd have an invasives problem. And the research on that's kind of out on whether you have a big difference in species after a big fire. Still a tragic event. We did lose the trees, but we'll grow back. I think the thing I love about nature so much and talking about Earth Day is that nature is extremely resilient. If you just leave it alone, it comes back. And that is just one of the most amazing things we can think of. Like, no matter what humans are doing, no matter what we're cutting down, like, nature has a way of just finding its way back. So that's reason for hope.

Katy Smith:
[13:28] I mean, really, I wanted to do this episode because I think about the important role that trees play in making Greenville County a place we love and the important role they play for us as people who live in houses that benefit from their shade or pedestrians who benefit from them as we're walking on sidewalks. But you are exactly right. Those larger leadership and civic lessons are so beautiful about resilience, about, you know, planting a tree under whose shade you'll never sit for the next generation, about coming together to do something that we can all benefit from. I think that's really, really beautiful. The other beautiful civics lesson that comes from this conversation about trees is partnership. And I admire so much the work of Trees Upstate because you do so much in partnership. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Aaron?

Aaron Davis:
[14:16] Oh, I'd love to. We found that when we come into a community, when we do a tree planting event, members of the community actually meet their neighbors for the first time.

Aaron Davis:
[14:27] And when they plant trees, it's kind of a community-wide thing where we're making our entire neighborhood more beautiful. So there are a few things that can bring people together like trees can. Even sometimes we'll have DJs come out and play music as people are planting trees. It can be a fun event for every age. I mean, we've had well over 100 corporate partners who've helped us through this process. We've had Rotary Clubs. We've had Lion's Clubs, and we've worked with the cities and counties of the areas that we serve and other conservation organizations like we've done work with Upstate Forever, with Natural Land Trust, with Friends of Saluda River, Friends of the Reedy River. We've worked with organizations out in Spartanburg and are increasingly doing that, and so we don't, we don't even have enough staff to do it on our own and I hope we never do because this is a volunteer-led, community-led organization.

Aaron Davis:
[15:26] That is all about people coming together and doing something that's not only good for now, but is good for the next generation. So when you plant a tree, you have to hope that the next generation is going to be better than the one you're in now. Or you have to hope that at least it's going to still be here because you want that tree to still be there. And you're saying, I'm planting something right now that's going to live 100 years or more. And that is something the community can rally around, is something individuals can rally around and say that we are going to make this place a more beautiful place for the future.

Katy Smith:
[16:00] That's beautiful. Well, is there anything else you'd like to share before we close?

Aaron Davis:
[16:03] I would love to share a quote by the founder of Arbor Day, Julius Sterling Morton. Says, "Nature teaches by antithesis. When sick, we learn to value health. When blind, we realize the beneficence, the surprising and delicious sense of sight. When deaf, we dream of the music we love to hear. So these treeless plains were unfolded to the vision of the pioneer as a great lesson to teach him and her the indispensability of the woodlands."

Katy Smith:
[16:38] That is beautiful. Well, I thank you for that. I thank you for this conversation. And I thank you so much for your leadership and the work of your entire team at Trees Upstate in helping keep Greenville green. Thanks so much, Aaron.

Aaron Davis:
[16:51] Well, happy Arbor Day and happy Earth Day.

Katy Smith:
[16:54] Thanks so much.

Catherine Puckett: Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org.