The Climate Action Team is thrilled that next week a small crew from the Minneapolis City Forestry Department will be preparing our Groveland Terrace hillside for the tree planting festival that will happen Saturday, November 7, 2026. (Mark your calendars for 9am – 3 pm!) Here’s the plan, weather permitting: Monday, 7/6 – cut down the two trees closest to the SS Beagle, the noisiest part of the project. These trees will then be used for terracing and mulching. Tuesday – prepare the top of the slope next to the chain link fence by hand auguring the soil to a depth of 2.5 feet, incorporating compost from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Dakota Composting facility, covering with a layer of cardboard, then of wood chips. Terrace with logs, manage silt with haybales. Repeat daily in descending sections until the 20′ x 65′ planting area is complete, ideally by Friday 7/10. Except for delivered wood chips, which will be piled above the sidewalk, materials will arrive on site on the day they are needed.
Here’s Hannah Lewis’ planting plan: Four hundred plants, 3 per square yard from Canopy: Northern red oak, sugar maple, basswood (also bur oak, white oak, green ash). Subcanopy: Bitternut hickory, ironwood, blue beech, American elm, red elm, hackberry. Shrub: prickly gooseberry, chokecherry. Additional possibilities (from MHs37): Shagbark hickory, black cherry, American hazelnut, Missouri gooseberry, pagoda dogwood, roundleaved dogwood, red-berried elder, box elder, prickly ash, black and red raspberry). MHs38 Southern Mesic Oak-Basswood Forest (mostly MNs38c). The local nurseries providing these plants don’t ship the saplings (mostly bare roots) until they have dropped their leaves.