Published: May 06, 2014 | 09:00 AM

Ninety Trees Beautify UC Irvine Housing

For the past three years, UC Irvine has implemented the student housing initiative aimed at planting trees throughout the vast housing complexes dotted around the campus. Irvine Ranch Water District and the Shadetree Partnership have collaborated to provide a variety of trees from the Shadetree nursery to the effort.

“We have had volunteers plant 700 trees provided by the partnership,” said Matt Deines, who works with UCI’s environmental planners and is a member of the Shadetree board. “The goal is to plant trees near the paths for the ecological effects, provide bird habitat, create an urban treescape and improve air quality.”

On Earth Day, student volunteers gathered to plant 90 trees at the UCI Palo Verde Student Housing complex. Many of the students were from Prof. Peter Bowler’s classes on sustainability.

“We have gone to the UCI arboretum and to the San Joaquin wetlands with our class,” said student Elise Jackson.

Dave Asman, landscape contracts administrator for IRWD and Shadetree representative, gathered with students and instructed them how to plant the strawberry trees, California peppers, Canary Island pines, Chinese flame trees, crape myrtles, Chinese Pistache, Brisbane Box and coast live oaks. Then the students took over.

The California friendly trees were selected from Shadetree’s vast inventory. Shadetree’s nursery is located at UCI and monthly nursery events take place. Participating in the UCI planting was Steve Reed, a volunteer manager of the Shadetree Nursery. He estimated that he and volunteer John Boone have logged in 2,000 hours at Shadetree since they became involved a few years ago.

“There is always a lot of work to do,” Reed said. “We need volunteers to rake, plant, weed and prune. Every day is Earth Day at Shadetree Partnership.”

Check out Shadetree’s website for information on future plantings, or nursery events.