January 2025 — Introducing our 2025 Focus

January — The Fundamentals of Public Greenspaces

Welcome to our 2025 focus: The Fundamentals of Public Greenspaces

Founded in 2010, Capital Trees was built on the values of collaboration, conservation, and community. A dedicated group of women launched Capital Trees after being inspired by a statewide conservation conference and a presentation on integrating tree canopy and greenspaces into urban planning by Rachel Flynn, who was serving as the City of Richmond’s Planner at the time. Initially led by community volunteers, the group focused on revitalizing empty tree wells across the city. Their vision soon expanded to transforming ecosystems that support both trees and people, evolving into the creation of welcoming, resilient, and vibrant public greenspaces.

As we enter 2025, we reaffirm our mission: We lead initiatives that use public greenspaces to awaken, restore, and transform the environment and everyone who lives in it.

Our 2025 blog series will reflect this mission, centering on topics related to public greenspaces — past, present, and future. This month’s post will define and ground our understanding of public greenspaces. Future topics will explore the fundamental components of effective public greenspaces including seating, safety, trails, biodiversity, management, community engagement, green infrastructure, signage, and support. 

But first, let’s begin with the basics: What is a public greenspace?

Simply put, a public greenspace is a piece of land that is accessible to anyone without barriers, includes vegetation like grass, trees, shrubs, and forbs, and draws people outside and together. Public greenspaces can include: parklands and forests, pocket parks, neighborhood parks, plazas with plantings, community gardens, cemeteries, playgrounds, greenways, fields/meadows, school yards, urban farms, food forests, and sidewalks with features such as green infrastructure, tree canopies, or cultivated landscapes.

Public greenspaces are essential to healthy and connected communities.  We will explore this more in future posts (check back monthly!). Until then, here are the key reasons public greenspaces are essential:

  1. They build social cohesion, connection, and compassion

  2. They build climate resilience in communities suffering disproportionate impacts of climate change like heat islands, poor air quality, and flooding

  3. They improve physical health and mental wellbeing

Capital Trees’ greenspace work includes green infrastructure along sidewalks and trails, efforts to increase tree canopy in public spaces, park improvements, ongoing management of completed projects, and major greenspace projects:

  • Green infrastructure on sidewalks at 14th street
  • Park improvements at Great Shiplock Park
  • Linear gardens along the Virginia Capital Trail (Low Line Gardens)
  • Community plaza at the start of the Capital Trail (Low Line Green)
  • Park improvements at Canoe Run, James Christian, and Libby Hill Viewshed garden
  • Tree canopy projects with Henrico County Parks
  • Greenspace installation at Hotchkiss Field Community Center, Hotchkiss Green

Fifteen years ago, we did more than plant trees — we sowed the seeds for what would become an essential path to creating thriving communities. Today, Capital Trees celebrates a legacy of transforming ignored spaces into vital sanctuaries that improve mental and physical health, restore the environment, and bring communities together. Over the past decade and a half, our projects have become icons of sustainability and community care, proving that lasting change grows from thoughtful collaboration and getting your hands in the dirt.

For us, this anniversary symbolizes resilience, dedication, expertise, and a shared commitment to building a legacy that heals the soil, the soul, and communities. With 15 years behind us, we celebrate our past accomplishments and make a promise for the future: to lead, inspire, and collaborate as we continue to work for a greener, healthier tomorrow.

References

  1. EPA Green Streets and Open Spaces:  https://www.epa.gov/G3/green-streets-and-community-open-space
  2. WHO, Urban green spaces: a brief for action, download at:  https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/344116
  3. Urban green spaces: A “green third place” to promote community:  https://www.acsm.org/blog-detail/fitness-index-blog/2024/06/12/urban-green-spaces-community
  4. The Importance of Green Spaces in an Increasingly Gray World:  https://sustainable-earth.org/green-spaces/
  5. Capital Trees turns 15:  https://capitaltrees.org/newsroom/capital-trees-turns-15/ 

January — Urban Greenspace Maintenance

An often asked question is: “What do you do in the gardens in the winter?” A common misconception is that not much happens in our greenspaces between fall and winter. There’s plenty to do in the cold season, but it depends on a number of factors like weather, aesthetic goals, and wildlife habitat/food goals.

Delayed Removal of Last Year’s Growth

In the gardens managed by Capital Trees, our goal is to find the balance between maintaining winter habitat for our smaller friends and maintaining an acceptable aesthetic for a public garden. Many insects and bees overwinter in the leaf litter and in or on the dead stems of perennials and grasses. Since most perennials do not need spent foliage and flower stalks removed until right before the start of the growing season, we often leave them in place rather than tidying up in the fall. In many instances this dead vegetation actually protects the crown of the plant from bitter cold, and leaving them in the gardens provides crucial overwintering opportunities for pollinators and other insects. We do some limited cutting in areas where the foliage flops and impedes pedestrian trails and/or extends beyond the confines of the garden, which is where our careful balance comes into play.

Spent perennials at Great Shiplock Park have been left standing until weather warms in the spring.

All the leaf litter is left unless diseased. Not only does this provide habitat, but it is nature’s mulch, feeding the microbiome under the soil and regulating soil temperature and moisture. The foliage that is removed early is either left in the garden or put somewhere on site to decompose.

Pruning

It’s recommended to prune trees and shrubs (woody plants) during a certain time of year to best promote the health and longevity of the plant  The pruning window for most of the woodies in the gardens in our region is between the end of January and mid March, when the trees and shrubs are mostly dormant. This promotes new growth in the spring. While annual pruning is best done in late winter or just before spring — broken, diseased, and deadwood can safely be removed any time of the year.

Weeding

Weeding is a year-round task.  Yes, even when it’s frigid! Richmond, Virginia does not normally experience winters that kill the winter weeds that grow in this area. Even the weather experienced in the last few weeks has not killed these weeds, though it did slow down the growth and germination. Examples of winter weeds include various chickweeds, bittercress, dandelions, henbit, blue violets, and wild garlic to name a few.

A major tool in our toolbox for sustainable gardening is the elimination of weeds before they go to seed. Controlling the seed bank is essential to being able to maintain a garden without the use of herbicides. Just one of the above plants can produce in excess of 10,000 seeds in a season. Thanks to our year-round volunteers, we continue to hand remove weeds throughout the winter season.

A community workday in the Low Line Gardens is scheduled for March 15, 2025. We will be doing a variety of garden tasks like cutting back grasses and perennials, pruning woodies, and weeding.  No experience is needed and we will supply gloves and tools. Learn more and sign up to join in here.

Whether it’s at the work day or just out enjoying the gardens, we look forward to seeing you in our urban greenspaces soon!

January — Featured Trees Seasonal Update

Throughout 2025, we’ll be documenting the black gum tree, Nyssa sylvatica, which is planted at many of our urban greenspaces. This native tree is one of our favorites, hence its wide use. It offers interest every season of the year — shiny green leaves in the summer, brilliant reds, yellows, oranges and purples in the fall, and architectural structure in the winter.

Important for our purposes, black gum trees thrive in a variety of growing conditions making it suitable for planting in urban soils.  They are tolerant of drought, heat, and both dry and wet soils. Typically in cultivated conditions the tree matures at 20-30 feet in height with a 1-2′ diameter trunk. Because it’s native, it supports a variety of wildlife including mammals, birds, and insects.
Below, on the left is a black gum tree at the Low Line Green, and on the right is a black gum planted in the median at Great Shiplock Park. Stay tuned over the next couple of months to watch the trees start to break dormancy. You can learn more about black gum trees here.

January — “Spotted At” the Low Line Gardens

We spotted signs of a well-rounded landscape at the Low Line Gardens! Our gardens are designed to support our community, and visitors of all shapes and sizes — including wildlife! With the lack of foliage on our perennials, we were able to spy remnants of bird nests — evidence of birds using the greenspace for nesting during the growing season. We also snagged a photo of a Northern Mockingbird perched amongst the plants. We avoid using herbicides in our urban greenspaces so that they are a safe haven for birds, mammals, and pollinators, and we love to see birds taking refuge here.

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