Maine Audubon is thrilled to announce an exciting new project which will develop four community tree nurseries in Maine’s three largest cities, as well as in Machias. Similar to commercial plant nurseries, with tree nurseries the idea is to create space and infrastructure for small tree and plant seedlings to be grown along until they reach the size and self-sufficiency to be planted out in the communities they are intended to serve. In some cases, these nurseries will consist of large fenced-in field sites with trees grown in the ground in rows, while others will involve containers and/or gravel beds, allowing for the easy removal and transplanting of bare root trees.
These four nurseries will produce trees that city arborists will use to restore the forest canopy in urban Portland, Bangor, and Lewiston/Auburn, and will be used in habitat restoration projects Downeast. This allows municipalities and restoration professionals to plan and purchase more intentionally and economically, and for Maine Audubon to help them source native species which can be hard to find in the sizes and quantities they most need.
These conservation horticulture nurseries will be overseen by City Parks and Public Works staff, managed by Maine Audubon, and staffed via new work study programs for teens from marginalized communities with help from numerous intercultural partners such as Maine Community Integration, Maine Association of New Americans, and others. The project will also benefit from overarching oversight from Forestry Professor and Penobscot citizen John Daigle at the University of Maine, who will help ensure connections to forestry research and careers, as well as Wabanaki conservation values. This project is made possible by a Project Canopy grant from the Maine Forest Service, who we are also excited to partner with on this important project.
Maine Audubon has worked very closely with community leaders in each location to develop and scale plans in close collaboration and with shared values in mind. Specific plans for the 2025 growing season at each location are as follows:
PORTLAND
Maine Audubon and Portland Parks have worked together on planting projects throughout the city for more than a decade. As a result, it was easy for us to identify the significant number of plants we use each year, and Portland City Arborist Mark Reiland anticipates that the city will continue to plant more than 100 large caliper street trees annually for many years to come. As we’ve continued to collaborate on plans for more and more habitat and canopy restoration throughout Maine’s largest city, we had already experienced challenges in sourcing the species and sizes we need. Together, we approached our partners at Portland Arts & Technology High School (PATHS) to install a tree nursery for the horticulture and new outdoor leadership & education programs there. During summer months, Maine Audubon plans to work with our friends at Maine Association for New Americans (MANA) to enable paid opportunity for teens. Our plans include a “Missouri Gravel Bed,” (see photo below) which allows the growing on and easy transplanting of very large trees in a relatively small space.
“Portland has partnered closely with Maine Audubon on projects, initiatives, and policy across our city for decades, and Portland Parks Division first piloted many of the efforts Maine Audubon now looks to replicate and expand,” says Alex Marshall, Parks Division Director, Portland Parks, Recreation & Facilities Department. “We share Maine Audubon’s focus on engaging youth in stewarding the spaces and habitats around them . . . We are happy that PATHS can serve as a hub of activity exposing Portland youth to the skills and careers we enjoy. We hope models such as Portland Youth Corps and some of our habitat restoration demonstration projects can expand to other regions of the state.”
Photo by Stephan Papiz, Robbinsdale Forester/Natural Resources Specialist
BANGOR
Close to our Fields Pond Audubon Center, we have worked with Bangor schools, public works, and many community groups to engage people in habitat restoration projects. As we spoke with Public Works Director Aaron Huotari and City Arborist Ben Arruda, we all reflected on the innovation of longtime Bangor arborist Roland Perry in having developed a community tree nursery, now overgrown and not ideally sited.
“We hope to grow trees which will be planted out throughout the city as part of our existing arboriculture operations,” says Aaron Huotari, Bangor’s Director of Public Works. “We currently plant roughly 50-75 trees annually in city parks, streets, and other rights of way. It has become increasingly difficult, expensive, and logistically challenging to source the species and size we require from area nurseries, and we often must compromise our broader ecological and aesthetic goals based on what is available to fill a particular hole. We have long aspired to grow our own trees, but have lacked the resources to do so alongside other pressing maintenance and arboriculture demands.”
A community tree nursery will solve these issues and engage the community as well. The city has already identified and improved access at a new site on Finson Road, where we will also be installing large gravel beds in which to grow large caliper trees Ben has needs and plans for for many years. Our Fields Pond staff are working with United Technologies Center, a career and technical high school in the Bangor region, to add a tree nursery component to their vocational programs, and Maine Audubon hopes to develop summer teen stewardship programming with local community organizations as well.
LEWISTON/AUBURN
Our partnership with Lewiston city arborist Steve Murch goes back about five years. We have helped engage youth and community leaders in habitat restoration throughout that city, and when we asked how Maine Audubon could support his tree planting efforts, Steve was quick to suggest supporting a local tree nursery. The Lewiston Auburn Community Forestry Board, and particularly the municipal arborists for both cities, has established a productive field nursery at a site in Auburn. Together, we hope to improve the infrastructure of that site both for growing and for hosting groups looking to study the trees and how we grow them. Steve and his counterpart in Auburn, Noel Skelton, will use trees grown at the nursery for street and park tree planting in parks, schoolyards, and along streets. Maine Audubon collaborates with Maine Community Integration, a local organization which empowers New Mainer girls and their families through a variety of social education and systems advocacy programs, on staffing and other support for programs engaging teens in conservation horticulture, civic engagement, and climate justice. These youth will play a direct and integral role in restoring canopy and the many benefits trees provide in their neighborhoods and throughout Lewiston-Auburn.
EAST MACHIAS
Maine Audubon has been concentrating on serving Washington County and the Downeast region of Maine better, and with the start of the 2024 school year, we marked the start of an exciting new partnership to further this goal. We are teaming with our friends at Project SHARE (Salmon Habitat and River Enhancement) and Washington Academy, an independent high school in East Machias, to restore a conservation horticulture nursery which will engage students and the surrounding communities in producing native plants for nearby habitat restoration projects. In January, we hired a Community Tree Steward for Washington Academy to work with students and oversee growing the operation. We plan to start our first batch of plants this spring, and Project SHARE will be leading the planting out of these plants—including dozens of species of perennials, shrubs, and trees—at several river project sites throughout the summer and fall. Our goal is to sustain the conservation horticulture program at Washington Academy through various government restoration funding sources as a way to redirect expense lines which currently cover revegetation traditionally done by hydroseeding and/or other exotic planting.
Says Judson McBrine, Head of School, Washington Academy, “We are encouraged by how well this project fits our school’s core values of preparing responsible global citizens and championing a progressive culture of innovation. This project addresses authentic community needs both within and beyond our school borders, and has a strong emphasis on engaging youth in solutions that address climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and regional economic development. We believe engaging youth in this way allows us to empower the individual student and develop the whole person, both of which are also in the core values of our school. We look forward to our students and campus benefiting directly from this programming, while also producing plant material for the robust habitat restoration projects happening all around us.”
This Community Tree Nursery project demonstrates the nexus of ecological restoration, social justice, and community engagement in our most populous and impacted landscapes. While Maine Audubon will focus on engaging marginalized youth, we also plan to incorporate more public programming related to these important topics. Please stay tuned for more information.
