Trees Provincetown
2025 Year in Review
Hello Dear Friends,
Trees Provincetown is a community resource dedicated to planting and caring for trees in Provincetown and advocating for their protection and well-being. Our activities focus on working with the Tree Warden, the Tree Advisory Group, and the community to provide guidance and funding for the planting, protection and preservation of trees. With the climate crisis upon us, our investment in trees in Provincetown becomes all the more important for the protection and preservation of the town itself.
2025 Year in Review
Hello Dear Friends,
Trees Provincetown is a community resource dedicated to planting and caring for trees in Provincetown and advocating for their protection and well-being. Our activities focus on working with the Tree Warden, the Tree Advisory Group, and the community to provide guidance and funding for the planting, protection and preservation of trees. With the climate crisis upon us, our investment in trees in Provincetown becomes all the more important for the protection and preservation of the town itself.
Our 2025 impacts centered on planting new trees in the community and stewarding the existing tree canopy.
Planting Trees
Since we started planting trees in Provincetown in 2016, we’ve planted over 60 trees in all. We’ve planted specimen trees for community nonprofits like The Provincetown Theater and The Commons. We’ve planted shade trees on town properties like the school playground and Town Hall. We’ve planted several trees at affordable housing projects in Provincetown and along public ways to provide shade. All of our plantings enhance the quality of life in Provincetown and help restore our tree canopy.
Since we started planting trees in Provincetown in 2016, we’ve planted over 60 trees in all. We’ve planted specimen trees for community nonprofits like The Provincetown Theater and The Commons. We’ve planted shade trees on town properties like the school playground and Town Hall. We’ve planted several trees at affordable housing projects in Provincetown and along public ways to provide shade. All of our plantings enhance the quality of life in Provincetown and help restore our tree canopy.
Two of three New Harmony American elms planted by Trees Provincetown on Bradford Street Extension, 2024
During 2025, our plantings totaled a record twelve trees in one season. Our biggest project was renovation of the shade trees at the East End playground. With approval of the Provincetown Recreation Department and the Tree Warden, we removed five decayed and dying white birch trees along Howland Street and replaced them with five new black tupelos (Nyssa sylvatica). Black tupelo is a shade tree native to Cape Cod, known for its spectacular fall foliage and its value to bees and other pollinators. It has a deep taproot that makes it more resilient to saltwater flooding.
This was a significant investment for Trees Provincetown, our single largest capital outlay over the last ten years for improving our local tree canopy. We’re grateful to the town for working with us to accomplish it!
Planting one of the new black tupelos at East End playground
In 2025 we also planted three hornbeams on Prince Street at the Grace Hall parking lot, a flowering dogwood at the High Pole Hill pocket park, a flowering magnolia at The Commons, and a group of plantings at 160 Commercial Street including a pollinator garden enhancing a New Harmony elm and another flowering magnolia. Some of these plantings were memorial trees funded by donors in honor of beloved family members, and others were direct investments in the town’s tree canopy by Trees Provincetown.
Planting one of the new hornbeams on Prince Street
New hornbeam in leaf in summer fog
Dogwood planted by Trees Provincetown at High Pole Hill Pocket Park
Planting trees in town is our reason for being. Our mission becomes more challenging with the summer droughts and the increasing scarcity of public planting sites. But we remain committed. Trees are an essential infrastructure in our urban coastal environment. Every new community tree we plant helps restore the tree canopy we once had, protects against storm-water runoff and soil erosion, sequesters carbon, and reminds us that some of the most wondrous things alive are tall and green.
Princeton elm on Standish Street, planted 2019. We need more shade trees like this lasting beauty!
Stewarding Trees
We play a critical role in supporting the Tree Warden in stewardship of community trees. In 2025 this included preparing a Tree Watering Guide for DPW’s use in operating its tree watering truck, and organizing an annual community tree assessment conducted by Ken MacPhee of Bartlett Tree Experts.
We have also continued to play a leadership role in renovating the pear and maple trees bordering the School Street Parking Lot on the West End. These trees, planted over 30 years ago, are in significant decline due to foliar disease and insufficient soil exposure to water and air. In late 2024 DPW removed the asphalt from around the eastern border and added new, amended soil and gravel to enable the roots to recover. In 2025 Trees Provincetown funded pruning and fertilization of these trees, as well as organic foliage treatment. Renovation of the western border is under study.
Our community tree stewardship activities increasingly focus on taking care of trees that we’ve planted over the years. In 2025 this included structural pruning of the big, beautiful Princeton elms that we planted in front of The Commons in 2018. This pruning was essential to establish proper branch spacing and improve light and air penetration through the crowns. We also funded fertilization of the two October Glory maples we planted in the school playground in 2019 and the three New Harmony elms we planted on Bradford Street extension last year. We invest in this kind of care for our trees to help insure their sustainability for decades to come.
We play a critical role in supporting the Tree Warden in stewardship of community trees. In 2025 this included preparing a Tree Watering Guide for DPW’s use in operating its tree watering truck, and organizing an annual community tree assessment conducted by Ken MacPhee of Bartlett Tree Experts.
We have also continued to play a leadership role in renovating the pear and maple trees bordering the School Street Parking Lot on the West End. These trees, planted over 30 years ago, are in significant decline due to foliar disease and insufficient soil exposure to water and air. In late 2024 DPW removed the asphalt from around the eastern border and added new, amended soil and gravel to enable the roots to recover. In 2025 Trees Provincetown funded pruning and fertilization of these trees, as well as organic foliage treatment. Renovation of the western border is under study.
Our community tree stewardship activities increasingly focus on taking care of trees that we’ve planted over the years. In 2025 this included structural pruning of the big, beautiful Princeton elms that we planted in front of The Commons in 2018. This pruning was essential to establish proper branch spacing and improve light and air penetration through the crowns. We also funded fertilization of the two October Glory maples we planted in the school playground in 2019 and the three New Harmony elms we planted on Bradford Street extension last year. We invest in this kind of care for our trees to help insure their sustainability for decades to come.
Princeton elms planted at The Commons by Trees Provincetown seven years ago and pruned this year
We continue our public service to the town of Provincetown by managing the town’s Memorial Tree Program on behalf of the Tree Warden – free of charge – and serving as Chair of the Tree Advisory Group.
Guest Column: Good Reads Featuring Trees
By Tina M. Trudel, PhD, Certified Permaculture Designer
For over a decade, my spouse and I had the privilege of living year-round in Provincetown, walking many Outer Cape trails in conservation areas throughout the seasons. The settings and views were always spectacular in that unique offshore light. The diverse flora and fauna of the Cape and Islands, and nature’s complex, evolving interaction with the changing Cape demographics, were the focus of author Robert Finch through many books and essays. The region is blessed with innumerable writers who have captured the essence of the Outer Cape, but few with the long-time resident perspective and sensitivity to the trees, forests and their interaction with human activities.
Special Places on Cape Cod and the Islands by Robert Finch, originally published in 2003, features 24 descriptive essays highlighting special preserved locales from Falmouth to Provincetown, along with Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. I was particularly appreciative of his observations from Foss Woods in Provincetown, an area quite familiar to us with its oak canopy, shadbush, upland pitch pine, swamp white cedars, and tupelo. This 15-acre hidden gem is part of the Provincetown Conservation Trust restricted holdings. It is comprised primarily of the back slope of a dune to the south, and the eastern edge includes a red maple/tupelo swamp. The oldest pines are noted to be two feet in diameter at breast height. Aerial views show a greenbelt with established trees holding fast in a fragile environment. A walk through this pocket forest finds it teeming with diversity and life, just as the town itself.
Finch shares local sentiments regarding the importance of saving Foss Woods for future generations, remaining under local stewardship. He contrasts this with the larger parcels and forests such as the National Seashore. “The creation of such large preserves… has been invaluable; but it has also inadvertently fostered a dangerous dichotomy, namely, the belief that there are two kinds of land: that which has been set aside for conservation and wildlife, and that which has not and is therefore open for any kind of human use and alteration.”
By Tina M. Trudel, PhD, Certified Permaculture Designer
For over a decade, my spouse and I had the privilege of living year-round in Provincetown, walking many Outer Cape trails in conservation areas throughout the seasons. The settings and views were always spectacular in that unique offshore light. The diverse flora and fauna of the Cape and Islands, and nature’s complex, evolving interaction with the changing Cape demographics, were the focus of author Robert Finch through many books and essays. The region is blessed with innumerable writers who have captured the essence of the Outer Cape, but few with the long-time resident perspective and sensitivity to the trees, forests and their interaction with human activities.
Special Places on Cape Cod and the Islands by Robert Finch, originally published in 2003, features 24 descriptive essays highlighting special preserved locales from Falmouth to Provincetown, along with Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. I was particularly appreciative of his observations from Foss Woods in Provincetown, an area quite familiar to us with its oak canopy, shadbush, upland pitch pine, swamp white cedars, and tupelo. This 15-acre hidden gem is part of the Provincetown Conservation Trust restricted holdings. It is comprised primarily of the back slope of a dune to the south, and the eastern edge includes a red maple/tupelo swamp. The oldest pines are noted to be two feet in diameter at breast height. Aerial views show a greenbelt with established trees holding fast in a fragile environment. A walk through this pocket forest finds it teeming with diversity and life, just as the town itself.
Finch shares local sentiments regarding the importance of saving Foss Woods for future generations, remaining under local stewardship. He contrasts this with the larger parcels and forests such as the National Seashore. “The creation of such large preserves… has been invaluable; but it has also inadvertently fostered a dangerous dichotomy, namely, the belief that there are two kinds of land: that which has been set aside for conservation and wildlife, and that which has not and is therefore open for any kind of human use and alteration.”
Now we are fortunate to live in northern New England for a decade, the most forested region of the United States. Our 20-acre homestead is 75% forest, some managed as a wood lot, and roughly half left wild, with trails leading to thousands of acres of adjacent forested land protected through conservation. From this current frame of reference, I was immediately drawn to How to Love a Forest (2024) by Ethan Tapper, a Vermont forester working a few hours from our home. My spouse serves on our town Conservation Board as part of the New Hampshire Association of Conservation Commissioners, and had the opportunity to meet and listen to Ethan Tapper at this year’s annual meeting, securing a signed copy of this wonderful volume that speaks to my ecological heart.
While it’s easy to be caught up with the towering trees (especially as a forester), Tapper beautifully discusses the full ecosystem: from the organisms in the soil and among the roots, the nurturance of rotting leaf litter, the new seeds sprouting a next generations of trees, to underbrush and the many creatures living within the forest from insects to black bear, and then the wide variety of trees- all in interrelationship. He describes the forest working together as a colony or collective. On each day when I look out the window, walk the trails, see the prolific birds, squirrels, deer, and wild turkeys, I too feel the connection to the trees and the source that binds all of us to the cycles of life on this planet.
Through anecdote and analysis, Tapper talks about the fragility of our ecosystems, noting how many lifeforms are in retreat or facing extinction, and the ones we have already lost. I was keenly affected by his discussion of the human species and our role, a degrading force by either doing too much or doing nothing, echoing themes Robert Finch explored when discussing the development on Cape Cod and its impact on the natural world. Tapper discusses the difficulty of straddling the two worlds of the status quo that treats all living things including forests as commodities, versus those who feel the only true expression of love for the natural world is to leave it alone, even when faced with invasive species. He proposes a new land ethic for our modern times reminding us that, “what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.”
In closing, Tapper writes about planting acorns in an effort to help a patch of forest in recovery. He speaks about his own life journey, and gives hope for the future. “Sometimes this life feels like autumn: the exhausted end of a boundless summer. Today I choose to live in a world in which spring is just breaking, impossible and inevitable- a world that is just awakening, just beginning to discover what it truly is. I look toward the broken ridge of the mountain and feel a powerful nostalgia, not for the past but for the future. High above the storm, the light is swelling, calling everything upward, toward a world that is just beginning. I am trying. I bend and plant another acorn.”
While it’s easy to be caught up with the towering trees (especially as a forester), Tapper beautifully discusses the full ecosystem: from the organisms in the soil and among the roots, the nurturance of rotting leaf litter, the new seeds sprouting a next generations of trees, to underbrush and the many creatures living within the forest from insects to black bear, and then the wide variety of trees- all in interrelationship. He describes the forest working together as a colony or collective. On each day when I look out the window, walk the trails, see the prolific birds, squirrels, deer, and wild turkeys, I too feel the connection to the trees and the source that binds all of us to the cycles of life on this planet.
Through anecdote and analysis, Tapper talks about the fragility of our ecosystems, noting how many lifeforms are in retreat or facing extinction, and the ones we have already lost. I was keenly affected by his discussion of the human species and our role, a degrading force by either doing too much or doing nothing, echoing themes Robert Finch explored when discussing the development on Cape Cod and its impact on the natural world. Tapper discusses the difficulty of straddling the two worlds of the status quo that treats all living things including forests as commodities, versus those who feel the only true expression of love for the natural world is to leave it alone, even when faced with invasive species. He proposes a new land ethic for our modern times reminding us that, “what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.”
In closing, Tapper writes about planting acorns in an effort to help a patch of forest in recovery. He speaks about his own life journey, and gives hope for the future. “Sometimes this life feels like autumn: the exhausted end of a boundless summer. Today I choose to live in a world in which spring is just breaking, impossible and inevitable- a world that is just awakening, just beginning to discover what it truly is. I look toward the broken ridge of the mountain and feel a powerful nostalgia, not for the past but for the future. High above the storm, the light is swelling, calling everything upward, toward a world that is just beginning. I am trying. I bend and plant another acorn.”
Tina M. Trudel, PhD is a certified permaculture designer and clinical neuropsychologist with a background in the effects of environmental neurotoxins on humans. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Trees Provincetown.
What can you do?
Plant a Setback Tree
One way to help combat climate change in Provincetown is by offering a planting site on your property for a new shade tree that will be planted by the Tree Warden. Trees planted by the Tree Warden on private property within 20 feet of a public way with permission from the property owner become community trees protected by our tree bylaw. Called “setback trees,” they are purchased and planted by the Tree Warden free of charge to the property owner. In exchange the owner commits to watering and caring for the tree. This program is funded by Trees Provincetown. To learn more about this opportunity to increase the tree canopy in town for free, please call the Tree Warden, Jim Vincent (508-487-7060) or reach out to Trees Provincetown at [email protected].
One way to help combat climate change in Provincetown is by offering a planting site on your property for a new shade tree that will be planted by the Tree Warden. Trees planted by the Tree Warden on private property within 20 feet of a public way with permission from the property owner become community trees protected by our tree bylaw. Called “setback trees,” they are purchased and planted by the Tree Warden free of charge to the property owner. In exchange the owner commits to watering and caring for the tree. This program is funded by Trees Provincetown. To learn more about this opportunity to increase the tree canopy in town for free, please call the Tree Warden, Jim Vincent (508-487-7060) or reach out to Trees Provincetown at [email protected].
Even little trees matter. Some day they will be big! Japanese black pine planted by Trees Provincetown at West End boat ramp
Plant a Memorial Tree
Trees Provincetown manages the town’s Memorial Tree Program on behalf of the Tree Warden. To learn more about the opportunity to plant a memorial tree please see the description of the program under m-Tree on the “Resources” page of our website www.treesprovincetown.org.
Princeton elm donated by Danny Mullin and planted by Trees Provincetown at Mussel Beach, 2019
A Heartfelt Thank You!
The simple act of caring for trees improves life on earth and in this town. It takes a stance on global warming and what we can do about it. We’re excited to be doing this for our community. Thank you, all, for your enthusiasm for our work and your support of our efforts! A very special thank you to our 2025 major donors.
Major Gifts 2025
Marty Davis
Ray and Kathleen-Murphy Pomerinke
John McGill
Pete Petas
DJ McManus Foundation
Susan Sipos
I hope you enjoy reading our 2025 Year In Review! With every good wish to all,
Margaret Murphy
Founder and President
Board Members:
Zehra Khan
Margaret Murphy
Tina Trudel
Lisa Westervelt
Board Advisors:
Tim Callis
Ken MacPhee
Todd Westrick
Margaret Murphy
Founder and President
Board Members:
Zehra Khan
Margaret Murphy
Tina Trudel
Lisa Westervelt
Board Advisors:
Tim Callis
Ken MacPhee
Todd Westrick
The Cherokee call trees “The Standing People.”
Trees Provincetown
535 Commercial Street #1
Provincetown, MA 02657
www.treesprovincetown.org
[email protected]
Production Credit: Naya Bricher
Photo Credits: Margaret Murphy, Todd Westrick
Trees Provincetown
535 Commercial Street #1
Provincetown, MA 02657
www.treesprovincetown.org
[email protected]
Production Credit: Naya Bricher
Photo Credits: Margaret Murphy, Todd Westrick