City Arborist Mark Reiland, left, and Parks Project Manager Tatyana Vashchenko inspect an American smoketree that was planted on Anderson Street as part of the Bayside Tree Project. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

On an unseasonable 74-degree day in November, standing in the sun felt hot in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood.

“Could we move to the shade?” asked Tatyana Vashchenko, parks project manager for the city of Portland.

Vashchenko and the Parks, Recreation and Facilities Department of Portland have been working to create more opportunities for shade specifically in Bayside. In the beginning of the month, the Bayside Tree Project completed planting 154 trees in the Portland neighborhood.

Historically, the industrial and commercial Bayside area has had fewer trees than other Portland neighborhoods, as well as fewer places where trees could be planted due to its heavy development, said Vashchenko. While the parks department plants trees in Portland every year, a concerted effort was needed to increase tree canopy in Bayside.

“The routine forestry planting that happens annually, just each year, is based off of observations that city staff have made by knowing this city backwards and forwards,” said Vashchenko. “This is an opportunity; by taking the effort of hiring someone to be able to really look at the map and walk it, and then walk it with us a second time, gave us just way more bandwidth to cover a neighborhood with trees.

“We’re interested in seeing whether we can replicate this in other neighborhoods in the future, too,” she said.

Bayside was identified as needing this effort by the American Forests Tree Equity Project. The conservation nonprofit American Forests maps tree canopy coverage across cities in the U.S. to highlight environmental inequalities by identifying neighborhoods that have fewer trees. The goal of the project is to identify high-need sites where tree projects would benefit the most people.

“We’re pretty comparable to, say, Boston and Bangor as far as overall composite scores, but when you dive into the individual neighborhoods, that’s where you can really see the differences, even just in our city,” said city Arborist Mark Reiland.

American Forests gives Portland an overall Tree Equity score of 87 out of 100, a rating on par with other cities in New England. Each neighborhood is also scored independently, with some rating higher than the city average. The West End has a score of 99, the Arts District has a score of 82, and the East End has scores ranging from 86 to 94. However, Bayside has the lowest score in the city with a rating of 48, with East Bayside rated at 49. The American Forests Tree Equity Project labels these two neighborhoods as “highest priority” for projects to increase tree coverage.

“This area was identified through a national objective metric,” said Reiland.

Scores from the Tree Equity Map also factor in demographic data to maximize the impact of tree projects and mitigate environmental inequalities. American Forests factored in that in Bayside, 60% of residents live in poverty, 49% are people of color and 23% are either children or elderly. Due to a lack of tree cover and high presence of paved surfaces, they face a disparity of increased heat in the summer, getting up to 18 degrees hotter than other neighborhoods that have more tree shade, according to American Forests.

Urban trees have clear social and health benefits in a community, said Reiland. Their shade lowers neighborhood temperatures in the summer, their roots intercept stormwater and their leaves filter air pollution. Increased trees add habitat, beauty and a sense of community pride to urban landscapes.

“So, I don’t think we’ll see huge, marked decreases in asthma incidents, but it does contribute to just an overall healthy populace in general,” said Reiland.

“To mental health, too,” added Vashchenko. “There’s a lot of studies that show living around more of a green space can affect the bulk of anxiety.”

In 2021, the City Council allocated $250,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act to the parks department to plant more trees in Bayside as well as carry out a study on future planting initiatives. Supplemented by a federal Community Development Block Grant, the total cost of the project was $275,000, which covered the contracted mapping and analysis, and the construction and purchase of trees and materials.

The consulting group Sebago Technics was hired to identify all locations in Bayside where trees could be planted. This included sites where nothing could have been planted by the Portland’s Forestry Division previously because it was concrete or brick, but where a contractor could cut a “tree well” into the artificial surface, creating a hole where the tree could grow.

The city originally put out a request for proposals to contractors in September 2023 but received no bids. A second proposal in January of this year received a bid from Nelson Property Services, who carried out the project.

To cut down project costs and attract contractors, the parks department decided to directly purchase trees and planting materials, as well as assume responsibility for the trees immediately. Typically in these types of projects, a contractor is on the hook for watering and survivability of the trees for a year or two, said Reiland.

Reiland selected all 154 trees by hand from local nurseries. Tree species were chosen that were native to the region and would be resilient to environmental conditions such as sidewalk salt, a warming climate and pests. As the invasive emerald ash borer is projected to kill 500 of Portland’s 600 ash trees, diversifying the tree species aims to prevent a repeat mass die-off.

“(Reiland is) trying to change or shift the city’s tree composition to a more diverse and therefore more resilient composition. And when we say resilient, it’s resilient to a lot of things, but in significant part it’s pests that come through, like the emerald ash borer,” said Vashchenko.

“When you rely too heavily on one or three trees across your city, when a new pest or a new invasive insect or disease comes through, you’re at risk of losing a third of your tree canopy,” she said.

Twenty-seven species of trees were planted in Bayside. Reiland selected some more commonly known species, such as ginkgo, eight crabapple varieties, sassafras and tulip poplar. Other less recognizable tree species now in Bayside consist of Carolina silverbell, eastern hophornbeam, American smoketree and serviceberry.

Vashchenko and Reiland said that Bayside residents were curious about the project, and responding positively to the trees – even though most of the trees are still quite small and leafless.

“They’re generally, predominantly, very enthusiastic and excited about the trees. And there’s some ownership that happens, some care and stewardship,” said Vashchenko.

On Greenleaf Street, a Bayside resident placed a small red birdhouse next to a newly planted hornbeam tree.

“One of the trees down there has a birdhouse. Someone had already perched into it and sort of started to adopt it, more or less. So, very positive,” Vashchenko said.