The Advocate highlights BRG’s push for native species, considering trees infrastructure – Oct 20, 2020

If you’re plan­ning to add trees and shrubs to your yard, now is the time to do it.

Plant­i­ng in the fall gives them time to get estab­lished, and, when spring arrives, they will flourish.

This sea­son, look beyond crêpe myr­tles and Brad­ford pear trees and pick native trees, shrubs and plants.

When you think ​“native,” think plants that occur nat­u­ral­ly in the region, state, ecosys­tem or habi­tat with­out direct or indi­rect human intervention.

Native trees like mag­no­lias, oaks, swamp titis, yaupons, native fringe trees, Vir­ginia wil­lows, fet­ter­bush­es, pond cypress, swamp tupe­los, native per­sim­mons and paw paws can make your yard look great and pro­vide cru­cial resources for wildlife.

Native trees have become a cru­cial part of the mis­sion of Baton Rouge Green.

The 30-year-old organization’s pri­or­i­ty used to be plant­i­ng trees for beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the city’s land­scape, said Christo­pher Coop­er, a pro­gram spe­cial­ist for Baton Rouge Green.

“We’ve made a tran­si­tion from just city beau­ti­fi­ca­tion to see­ing trees as what they real­ly are: green infra­struc­ture and essen­tial infra­struc­ture,” he said. ​“Because of this, we’ve been plant­i­ng as many native trees as we can.”

To help turn our plant­ed land­scapes into effec­tive bio­log­i­cal cor­ri­dors, Coop­er said we need to add native plants to our neigh­bor­hoods, cor­po­rate land­scapes and lands bor­der­ing infra­struc­ture — even in dense cities.

Baton Rouge Green cur­rent­ly man­ages over 4,300 trees on the road­ways and in com­mu­ni­ty land­scapes in East Baton Rouge Parish. The orga­ni­za­tion main­tains the trees with prun­ing, fer­til­iza­tion, weed con­trol, insect con­trol and inci­dent man­age­ment through an agree­ment with Louisiana Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and Devel­op­ment and East Baton Rouge Parish Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works.

Each year, a study showed, these 4,300 trees pre­vent the runoff of over 11.4 mil­lion gal­lons of stormwa­ter, save the com­mu­ni­ty over 466,000 kilo­watt-hours of ener­gy and store over 1.4 mil­lion pounds of car­bon, among count­less oth­er eco­log­i­cal benefits.

Trees ben­e­fit us by improv­ing air qual­i­ty, espe­cial­ly impor­tant for peo­ple with pul­monary issues. Sev­er­al schol­ar­ly stud­ies also sug­gest that enhanced veg­e­ta­tion along­side road­ways cor­re­lates to low­er stress and frus­tra­tion in dri­vers, and reduced crash rates, accord­ing to the BRG website.

“There is so much med­ical research now that iden­ti­fies the health ben­e­fits of trees to humans,” Coop­er said, ​“and we also know that they are cru­cial to ecosys­tems by pro­vid­ing habi­tat for wildlife.”

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing and encour­ag­ing tree plant­i­ng in pub­lic and com­mu­ni­ty areas, Baton Rouge Green also teach­es home­own­ers how to plant trees.

“We always want to edu­cate res­i­dents on select­ing the right tree in the right place,” Coop­er said.

You can down­load the organization’s Tree Plant­i­ng Guide here.

In addi­tion to plant­i­ng trees, you can add to Baton Rouge Green’s data­base of trees.

In August, the orga­ni­za­tion com­plet­ed map­ping and iden­ti­fy­ing more than 45,000 pub­lic trees in area.

Add your own trees to the count with Baton Rouge Green’s ​“My Tree” pro­gram. Using a smart­phone, tablet or com­put­er, you can iden­ti­fy, mea­sure and map trees in your yard and neigh­bor­hood. Par­tic­i­pants are guid­ed through tree iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and are able to plot the loca­tion of the tree on an inter­ac­tive map, then instant­ly see the ben­e­fits each tree they map pro­vides to the community.

Louisiana Mas­ter Nat­u­ral­ists of Greater Baton Rouge seek to advance aware­ness, under­stand­ing and stew­ard­ship of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. For infor­ma­tion, vis­it lmng​br​.org.