Trees Provincetown
2024 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 work with trees becomes all the more important for the protection and preservation of the town itself.
2024 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 work with trees becomes all the more important for the protection and preservation of the town itself.
Our 2024 impacts centered on planting trees, stewarding trees, and advocating for more of them in the community.
Planting Trees
We’re happy to report that, since we started planting trees in Provincetown, we’ve planted nearly 50 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. We’ve even sponsored a memorial tree adoption. All of our plantings enhance the quality of life in Provincetown and help restore our tree canopy.
We’re happy to report that, since we started planting trees in Provincetown, we’ve planted nearly 50 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. We’ve even sponsored a memorial tree adoption. All of our plantings enhance the quality of life in Provincetown and help restore our tree canopy.
Princeton elms planted by Trees Provincetown at The Commons, 2018
During 2024, our plantings totaled seven trees – two white birches at Town Hall, three American elms to create a canopy on the far west end of Bradford Street, and two flowering dogwoods, one at PAAM and the other at Center for Coastal Studies. All of these trees are memorial trees funded by donors in honor of beloved family members.
White birch trees tagged by Trees Provincetown at the nursery for delivery to Town Hall, 2024
Two of three New Harmony American elms planted by Trees Provincetown on Bradford Street, 2024
Dogwood planted by Trees Provincetown at PAAM, 2024
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. 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 2024 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 also are playing a leadership role in renovating the rows of 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. Trees Provincetown will now fund fertilization and organic foliage treatment and pruning of these trees, work to be done by Bartlett in 2025. Renovation of the western border is under study.
We play a critical role in supporting the Tree Warden in stewardship of community trees. In 2024 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 also are playing a leadership role in renovating the rows of 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. Trees Provincetown will now fund fertilization and organic foliage treatment and pruning of these trees, work to be done by Bartlett in 2025. Renovation of the western border is under study.
Permeable gravel tree beds instead of impermeable asphalt, 2024
Advocating for Trees
The Provincetown DPW is working with MassDOT on the redesign of Shank Painter Road. The redesign includes planting a number of trees along the roadway. In 2024, both as part of the Provincetown Tree Advisory Group and as an independent nonprofit, we urged DOT to change the plan to include significantly more trees than the plan envisions, and to select native shade trees for the plantings, including Princeton elm, White oak and Black tupelo.
Trees Provincetown also assumed a leadership role in submitting several public comments on the redesign of Motta Field, urging the Recreation Department to plant more shade trees and to include watering sources for the trees in the redesign.
The Provincetown DPW is working with MassDOT on the redesign of Shank Painter Road. The redesign includes planting a number of trees along the roadway. In 2024, both as part of the Provincetown Tree Advisory Group and as an independent nonprofit, we urged DOT to change the plan to include significantly more trees than the plan envisions, and to select native shade trees for the plantings, including Princeton elm, White oak and Black tupelo.
Trees Provincetown also assumed a leadership role in submitting several public comments on the redesign of Motta Field, urging the Recreation Department to plant more shade trees and to include watering sources for the trees in the redesign.
Guest Column: Gifts from Common Trees
By Tina M. Trudel, PhD, Certified Permaculture Designer
Robin Wall Kimmerer, PhD, a Potawatomi tribal member, botanist, MacArthur Fellow, and Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, has emerged across various literary, academic, and social media platforms as a leading voice of Indigenous knowledge in ecology. Her books Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, remain among the top sellers in the eco-literature space.
Her most recent book is a comparatively brief but powerful volume entitled The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024). This book continues to build on her success in blending Indigenous and Western ecological thought. Originally a magazine essay, she uses the example of a common small tree that is native to Cape Cod and much of the US, the serviceberry (AKA – shadblow, saskatoon, juneberry, Amelanchier spp.), to shed light on how all is interconnected, and challenges us to examine how we see and relate to the natural world and one another. She encourages us to view all living things as interconnected equals, to be honored and respected as critical to the great web of life. She provides a message espousing valuing, engaging, and caring, as a counterweight to the disconnection and powerlessness experienced by so many who have become alienated from nature, feeling separate or alone. Her example is rooted in this simple understory tree, often called Eastern Shadbush, the species common to Cape Cod (Amelanchier canadensis).
The book puts the serviceberry tree in the greater context of a ‘Gift Economy’ where wealth and the fruits of labor and effort, are focused on building community and strengthening relationships, including through personal actions of sharing and gifting, long traditions in Indigenous communities. Wall Kimmerer shares a different way of being in the world that is in tune with sustainability, and a vision of a kinder, gentler reality for all beings. I am reminded that there are many opportunities to share the gifts of interconnecting with trees and shrubs through planting, tending, adding to our landscape plants, and stewarding those already growing - receiving their gifts in return.
By Tina M. Trudel, PhD, Certified Permaculture Designer
Robin Wall Kimmerer, PhD, a Potawatomi tribal member, botanist, MacArthur Fellow, and Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, has emerged across various literary, academic, and social media platforms as a leading voice of Indigenous knowledge in ecology. Her books Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, remain among the top sellers in the eco-literature space.
Her most recent book is a comparatively brief but powerful volume entitled The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024). This book continues to build on her success in blending Indigenous and Western ecological thought. Originally a magazine essay, she uses the example of a common small tree that is native to Cape Cod and much of the US, the serviceberry (AKA – shadblow, saskatoon, juneberry, Amelanchier spp.), to shed light on how all is interconnected, and challenges us to examine how we see and relate to the natural world and one another. She encourages us to view all living things as interconnected equals, to be honored and respected as critical to the great web of life. She provides a message espousing valuing, engaging, and caring, as a counterweight to the disconnection and powerlessness experienced by so many who have become alienated from nature, feeling separate or alone. Her example is rooted in this simple understory tree, often called Eastern Shadbush, the species common to Cape Cod (Amelanchier canadensis).
The book puts the serviceberry tree in the greater context of a ‘Gift Economy’ where wealth and the fruits of labor and effort, are focused on building community and strengthening relationships, including through personal actions of sharing and gifting, long traditions in Indigenous communities. Wall Kimmerer shares a different way of being in the world that is in tune with sustainability, and a vision of a kinder, gentler reality for all beings. I am reminded that there are many opportunities to share the gifts of interconnecting with trees and shrubs through planting, tending, adding to our landscape plants, and stewarding those already growing - receiving their gifts in return.
Serviceberry is often referred to as a keystone species, a tree able to support native food ecosystems, particularly in the context of the broader native plant community including the caterpillar phase of the Tiger Swallowtail, Viceroy, and Admiral butterflies; nectar and pollen for both native and domesticated pollinators such as honeybees; and nutrition for the various birds and small animals that feed on the berries. It has a history of being called shadblow, with blooms occurring at the same time as river herring make their way inland during the spawning migrations on the East Coast, blooming and forming berries earlier than many other native food resources. Indigenous groups used the berries in a native dish called pemmican, a staple comprised of dried meat, animal fat, and dried berries shaped into bricks that could last through the winter safe from spoiling. Pieces were added to stew or fried with vegetables for added flavor and are noted to be difficult to digest when raw.
Other Cape Cod trees and shrubs that share their fruiting gifts with us include the elderberry growing in damp areas, whose fruit should be cooked as a precaution to avoid cyanide compounds, and of course cranberries in boggy areas. The Outer Cape environs enjoy numerous types of crab apples, beach plums, high and low bush blueberries, and the vining fox grapes (as delicious and rich as Concord grapes), and our stands of blackberries and red raspberries. All of these can be stewarded in the wild and added to home landscapes as gifts to our furred and feathered friends, as well as gifts to ourselves and our neighbors come harvest time.
"This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are - along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain, gathering in the towers of cumulonimbi. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full." - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Other Cape Cod trees and shrubs that share their fruiting gifts with us include the elderberry growing in damp areas, whose fruit should be cooked as a precaution to avoid cyanide compounds, and of course cranberries in boggy areas. The Outer Cape environs enjoy numerous types of crab apples, beach plums, high and low bush blueberries, and the vining fox grapes (as delicious and rich as Concord grapes), and our stands of blackberries and red raspberries. All of these can be stewarded in the wild and added to home landscapes as gifts to our furred and feathered friends, as well as gifts to ourselves and our neighbors come harvest time.
"This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are - along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain, gathering in the towers of cumulonimbi. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full." - Robin Wall Kimmerer
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?
Planting Trees Is Helping the Planet
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 help. ‘Tina’ Crabapple planted by Trees Provincetown in front yard at affordable housing property owned by Provincetown Housing Authority, 2022
Ways to Give
Trees Provincetown relies on donations to fund our activities in planting and protecting our community trees. Any amount helps. We are a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and donations are tax deductible as allowed by law.
Princeton elm donated by Danny Mullin and planted by Trees Provincetown at Mussel Beach, 2019
A Special Salute
Barbara Rushmore passed away in late 2022, at the age of 98, after sixty years of devotion to planting trees in Provincetown. In 2023, Trees Provincetown planted a tree in her memory in front of Town Hall, and installed this memorial plaque:
American Elm
Ulmus americana ‘Princeton’
In memory of
BARBARA RUSHMORE
1924—2022
Provincetown’s beloved “Tree Lady”
who planted hundreds of trees in our town.
Thank you, Barbara! We are forever grateful.
Ulmus americana ‘Princeton’
In memory of
BARBARA RUSHMORE
1924—2022
Provincetown’s beloved “Tree Lady”
who planted hundreds of trees in our town.
Thank you, Barbara! We are forever grateful.
Barbara was on our Board of Advisors and was one of our major donors. In 2024, her heirs made a $10,000 gift to Trees Provincetown through Friendship House Living Trust. We extend our deepest gratitude.
Peter Macara installing plaque by Barbara’s memorial tree, 2023
Leadership Transitions
A big welcome to Lisa Westervelt, our new Board member, and a fond farewell to Mark Collins, who is stepping down after 10 years of service.
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 in our community. Thank you, all, for your enthusiasm for our work and your support of our efforts! A very special thank you to our 2024 major donors.
Major Gifts 2024
DJ McManus Foundation
Friendship House Living Trust
John McGill
Pete Petas
Ray and Kathleen-Murphy Pomerinke
I hope you enjoy reading our 2024 Year In Review!
With every good wish,
Margaret Murphy
Founder and President, Trees Provincetown
Board Members:
Zehra Khan
Margaret Murphy
Tina Trudel
Lisa Westervelt
Board Advisors:
Tim Callis
Peter Macara
Ken MacPhee
Todd Westrick
Trees Provincetown
535 Commercial Street #1
Provincetown, MA 02657
treesprovincetown.org
[email protected]
Production Credit: Naya Bricher
Photo Credits: Margaret Murphy, Nicole Paine, Todd Westrick
535 Commercial Street #1
Provincetown, MA 02657
treesprovincetown.org
[email protected]
Production Credit: Naya Bricher
Photo Credits: Margaret Murphy, Nicole Paine, Todd Westrick