Pittsburgh Tree Plantings

Staking A Claim For
Our Pittsburgh Forest

The past couple weeks my nephew James Sichak and I volunteered with a number of local groups to help reforest our Urban environment with trees to enhance our communities.
We helped the Wilkinsburg Shade Tree Commission relocate 23 trees from a community nursery to homes throughout their neighborhoods a couple weeks ago.


We turned out with a number of community groups including East Liberty Development, and Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest(FPUF) and about a hundred volunteers from various community organizations in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh to plant trees on East Liberty Boulevard.



Then, this past weekend for Earth Day we joined again with FPUF and this time we worked together with Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Tree Vitalize, and Friends of The Waterfront . Our gratitude and humble thanks to corporate Sponsor Keen Shoes and the around 300 volunteers helping with planting trees along the South Side Trail bike trail. People were planting trees, perennials and bulbs along sections of the trail. There were over a 115 native trees planted today just along the trail... from river birches to American elms, magnolias to oaks... we planted trees! FPUF had two other plantings coinciding this planting, in the Morningside and Lawrenceville neighborhoods today as well. Awesome work FPUF!!
We had the tremendous opportunity at Urban Tree Forge to work with a a few of our community groups to provide tree stakes for their planting endeavors. This year we decided to take the opportunity to stencil our web address onto our stakes so we can get the word out about our efforts to utilize our local tree removals for projects and people within our urban setting. We were fortunate to be afforded the opportunity to provide tree stakes for Wilkinsburg borough tree plantings, for the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association, and for Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Some of our stakes were used for the tree plantings in the Lawrenceville and the Morningside neighborhoods, and for the East Liberty plantings a couple weeks back. Thank you for the opportunity to make a difference in our great city everyone...

Urban Forest Recycling

Wilkinsburg trees
Pilot project

This past Wednesday the 25th of February we worked in conjunction with Pittsburgh Lumberjack Tree Service, Inc. and Wilkinsburg borough to recover 4 beautiful London Plane trees along S. Braddock Ave.
Joe Suto from Lumberjack was great to work with and facilitated us getting the logs back to a lot where we can work to reclaim different sections for a variety of projects.
Kelly Frey from WTAE channel four news stopped by with Cathy working the camera to check out the endeavor and capture some footage of Lumberjacks' arborists bringing these beautiful specimens to the ground. Joan King from Wilkinsburg's shade tree commission also stopped to check on progress. Joan is responsible for contacting us originally to discuss the possibilities for working with the borough. Thank you Joan for all your hard work and dedication!!

Now the hard work begins as Urban Tree Forge's challenge is to find homes and opportunities to utilize these bastions of our urban Forest.
We already have a client for whom we can make a base for their dining table from a section, and we have a request for a sideboard cabinet for some as well. These projects will be a great start for these trees, but we need more. Please contact us here at the Urban Tree Forge if you are interested in having something made for you home or office, or if you are interested in a section you would like to work with yourself. These have some tremendous character and would be great for carving or turning as well.