From the press release:
Volunteers help enrich Norwalk’s urban landscape
As the tree liaison of the Spring Hill/Hospital Neighborhood Area Association, Diane Witkowski is bent on restoring the lush tree stands and greenery she recalls in the Norwalk of her childhood.
“Many of our magnificent 100-year-old-trees have been lost to development down through the years and the streets are far more barren,” she laments, rewinding the years.
Witkowski is encouraged by the city’s current urban forest initiative—Norwalk has been designated “Tree City U.S.A.” for the fourth consecutive year—and points to seven plantings in her neighborhood this spring as “a good start.”
Four red maples, two lindens and a cherry tree have bee added to the landscape on private property and land belonging to the Second Water District.
“We can’t roll back time and save the natural landscape we’ve already lost,” Witkowski says, “but we can plant new trees and promote reforestation.”
Witkowski is in her third year as a liaison committed to the arboreal health under a framework of 18 neighborhood associations, some of them highly active in urban forestry, others less so. They recognize that trees enhance the esthetics and elevate property values in a community. Trees also cool the streets and temper the urban heat by diffusing the sun’s reflection. They cleanse the air by trapping dust, converting CO2 to oxygen. They provide habitat for wildlife. They prevent flooding and soil erosion. And they define property lines.
The liaison’s job? To identify pockets in the neighborhood—on pubic and private property–that would be conducive to reforestation or need pruning and care, working with an 85-page illustrated guidebook listing 35 species of trees and 15 popular shrubs. The book is a scientific and practical how-to compendium of facts, figures and photos assembled by the City of Norwalk, the Norwalk Tree Alliance and the Norwalk Tree Advisory Committee.
Anyone interested in volunteering can obtain additional information by contacting Hal Alvord, Norwalk’s director of public works and the city’s tree warden, at (203) 854-7791 or online at halvord@norwalkct.org.
Says Don Nelson, chairman of the Norwalk Tree Advisory Committee: “We want to encourage more engagement in neighborhoods and liaison activities.”
