Thanks to the City of Burbank, we are now the proud owners of four new trees!
The first three trees came from the program
Made in the Shade sponsored by Burbank Water and Power. I called the department and three days later they sent over an arborist who helped me decide where to site the trees to shade our house and lower energy costs. He provided me with a list of about thirty trees to choose from, I made my choice, and one week later, they dropped off three full-sized trees along with all the equipment needed to plant them (stakes, ties, etc.).
The London Plane Tree
Two Peppermint Trees
Then Dev and Travis did the hard work of planting them. (The hardest part is actually not digging the holes, it's pounding in the stakes.)
Dev and I spent hours researching all thirty tree types before settling on a London Plane Tree for the front and two Peppermint Trees for the back. (It took some negotiating since apparently Dev and I want very different things out of trees.) Both tree types are very common all over the city (along with crepe myrtles, magnolias, and sycamores - the plane tree is a close relative of the sycamore).
A full-grown Peppermint Tree looks like this:
A full-grown London Plane Tree looks like this:
The second program was even easier. The city's
Parks and Recreation Department will provide you with free trees to plant in the parkway, that strip between the sidewalk and the street. And for this program, the city even plants them for you. I called the city's Forestry Department, they sent out someone within a few days to mark the place on the parkway where the tree should go, and then this weekend Dev removed the bricks that were covering our parkway.
On Monday I called the city again to let them know the bricks were gone and today, Wednesday, two city workers arrived at 8am and planted our tree.
City workers planting our tree, as viewed from the window because I was too shy to have them see me photograph them.
There are only three parkway tree options offered so it was a much less grueling research process than the first program. I love the Chinese Pistache we chose, especially because the tree is famous of its beautiful fall color even in southern zones.
A full-grown Chinese Pistache looks like this:
Or this in the fall:
We are planning on buying one more, a Japanese maple, as part of the front landscape redesign we're working on now and then we can just sit back and wait a few years for them all to fill out.
Just one of the many, many reasons I love Burbank.
