St. Cloud Joins Statewide Push to Cool Cities With More Trees

(KNSI) – St. Cloud residents can help grow the city’s tree canopy Thursday by joining a community planting at Rotary Park East.

Great River Greening is hosting the event on Thursday, May 7th, from 10:00 a.m. to noon, with experts on site to guide volunteers through the work. No experience is required. Organizers say there will be a short training at the start for first-timers or anyone needing a refresher.

The job involves planting large-stock trees into pre-dug holes, loosening root balls, backfilling with soil, watering, and spreading mulch. The trees themselves are part of a much bigger push to cool down Minnesota cities feeling the squeeze of urban heat islands, the pockets of pavement and rooftops that can run several degrees hotter than surrounding areas.

The St. Cloud planting is one piece of Great River Greening’s Cooling Minnesota Communities program, which aims to plant and water more than 10,000 trees across Brooklyn Center, Faribault, Mankato, Owatonna, St. Cloud, and St. Paul. Beyond the plantings themselves, the program includes free tree giveaways, gravel bed construction, and education about why urban tree cover matters in neighborhoods that heat up the fastest.

The initiative is backed by the State of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Urban and Community Forestry Program, with additional funding from the Van Sloun Foundation and the Life Time Foundation. Federal officials have called the broader national investment one of the largest ever made in urban forests, targeting the cities and towns where most Americans live and work.

To register, click here.

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