Hands-On Neighborhood Tree-Pruning & Mulching Workshop

Please come hone your pruning & mulching skills with us this Sunday, Sept. 29

Open to all!

Starts at 8 am, stay as long as you can or want

Cost: $5 suggested donation, though no one will be turned away due to lack of funds

Meet at Dunbar/Spring Community Garden/Orchard (NW corner of 11th Ave & University Blvd)

After the pruning and mulching demonstration, we will move to various parts of the neighborhood to get hands-on experience with certified arborist Aleck as we prune native food-bearing trees in our neighborhood’s public rights-of-way.

This is an incredible learning opportunity as every six months we revisit and rework areas pruned so we see the effect of our good work and mistakes, thereby enabling us to improve and evolve with the expert guidance from Aleck. Professionals can also get continued education credits for the workshop from Aleck.

Instructors:

Local certified arborist Aleck MacKinnon, The Pedaling Arborist; assisted by Brad Lancaster of Desert Harvesters and Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond; and Omar Ore-Giron of Native Roots Gardening and Desert Harvesters will teach participants:

• Best pruning times, techniques, and tools;
• How best to maintain City clearance standards for trees in the public right-of-way along footpaths and streets; and
• How to reuse prunings (cut up with hand tools or chipped with chipper/shredder) as an aesthetically-pleasing, water-conserving, fertility-enhancing mulch.

After the pruning, we will turn the prunings into mulch by Tank’s Materials/Fairfax Company.

This way the pruned biomass is recycled back into the root zone of the trees it came from. Nothing is thrown away or removed from the natural system. And we feed, rather than degrade the living soil carbon sponge.

This is how to transform wasteful Brush & Bulky into resourceful Chipped & Mulchy

Bring your own pruning tools, though we will provide tools for those that lack them

Come learn how you can replicate and evolve this practice to grow more healthy forests and citizen foresters in your neighborhood. This workshop is open to, and can be attended by, EVERYONE, no matter what neighborhood you live in.

NOTE: All public rights-of-way in front of properties must maintain a minimum continuous clear walkway area 5 feet wide and 7 feet tall to make our neighborhood walkways and forests easily navigable for all. Please prune accordingly to enable this.

See our Dunbar/Spring Neighborhood Walkability Study

Sponsored by the Dunbar/Spring Neighborhood Foresters and Desert Harvesters