Urban Trees

Trees make natural infrastructure in cities better.

Planting trees in urban areas, especially in the city core or along busy roadways, can be challenging. These complex projects frequently require extensive site preparation and have infrastructure restrictions and detailed planting specifications. Our trained Urban Trees team are assigned to complete these projects.

The Urban Trees team manages projects in areas that are more difficult to plant or require specialized tools or large machinery. For example, concrete sidewalks may be removed to create a new tree well, soil structures installed, or a back hoe used to plant large ball and burlap trees. Notable projects managed by our Urban Trees team include Downtown Tree Planting and Atlanta Beltline Arboretum Planting.

Trees are necessary and beneficial everywhere, including along busy transit corridors and highways. This allows us to use available land for more trees while also making areas more beautiful and cooler with shade.

Studies show that trees along streets help decrease the speed of traffic, reduce noise and air pollution from cars and trucks, and contribute to cooling down heat island temperatures.

Complex and Difficult Tree Plantings

The Urban Trees team uses heavy machinery and specialized tools in their daily work. Trees Atlanta also engages specialized companies to fulfill portions of planting contracts, as needed.

Our Urban Trees program is only available for our city and municipal partners, as well as through sponsored partnerships and contracts. For more information about Urban Trees, please contact our Business Development team or email info@treesatlanta.org.

Explore related stories (links above) to learn more about what Trees Atlanta is doing to double the tree canopy in Downtown Atlanta.

Downtown Atlanta has the lowest tree canopy cover of any neighborhood in the City of Atlanta. A 2008 analysis of Atlanta’s urban tree canopy (UTC) cover showed Downtown had 3% canopy cover; the city overall had 47.9% canopy cover. Through efforts of Trees Atlanta and the City of Atlanta, Downtown’s canopy cover inceased to 5.7%, as reported in the 2018 UTC analysis. The work continues.

In 2020, Trees Atlanta, Central Atlanta Progress (CAP), and the City of Atlanta committed to plant 8,000 trees in Downtown by 2030. A Downtown Atlanta Urban Tree Planting Plan was commissioned by the partners to find specific locations within the 1.5 square miles of Downtown where new trees could be planted. Achieving this goal will double Downtown’s canopy cover by 2030, and these trees will grow and create 20% tree cover by 2040. Increasing the number of trees delivers more benefits of trees. The outcome of this effort is improved air and water quality, more shade, and a landscape that matches the iconic reputation of Atlanta as the “City in the Forest.”

Planting in Downtown presents many opportunities to explore innovative approaches that can open up more areas to trees and improve the survivability of the trees in the most challenging environments.

Explore related stories (links above) to learn more about what Trees Atlanta is doing to help create the Atlanta Beltline Arboretum.

Trees Atlanta is among the earliest collaborators with Atlanta Beltline. The creation of the beautiful tree-lined greenspace along the transit corridor is one of Trees Atlanta’s most significant projects. This curated greenspace is known as the Atlanta Beltline Arboretum. An arboretum is a botanical garden dedicated to trees and woody plants. The Beltline Arboretum also features meadows of native grasses and pollinator plants that burst into color and form as the seasons change. In conjunction with continued trail development, the arboretum will expand as new trees are planted and added to the arboretum collections.

The Atlanta Beltline Arboretum is special in its linear form, and — once completed and 22-miles long — it may become the world’s longest linear arboretum!

Tree Atlanta has two dedicated teams that focus on the design, installation, and maintenance of the Arboretum. The Urban Trees Beltline team coordinates with the Atlanta Beltline and their contractors to remediate brownfields, prepare soils for plants and trees, accomodate underground utilities, and install large trees. Ongoing care of trees, planting smaller plants and grasses, and the important work of ongoing maintenance and care of the Beltline arboretum spaces is conducted by the Trees Atlanta Beltline Arboretum team.