Recycling Urban Trees

Note: We’re recycling a post that was originally published in April 2010. And we have an update: In October of this year, more than 100 members of West Coast Arborists will return to Fairyland for our third annual Arbor Camp and Work Day. The bulk of the work will take place Saturday, Oct. 13, when six ailing trees will be removed and undergrowth along our fence line will be cleared. In conjunction with this work, we’ll be scheduling a variety of related activities for our guests. Stay tuned!

By C.J. Hirschfield

For more than a decade, three huge redwood logs languished at the back of Fairyland’s meadow and picnic area. I have no idea when the tree was felled, but we had tried over the years to have someone haul the “waste” away and put the wood to good use, but to no avail. Too expensive.

So it was with a huge amount of joy that I watched last weekend as professional arborists from all over the great state of California turned those logs—right in front of the eyes of a thousand kids—into boards to be transformed by those same kids into hundreds of birdhouses that they could take back to their homes.

Arborist at work.

The activity was part of a remarkable event that occurred when Fairyland partnered with the Western Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture, the Britton Fund and the City of Oakland--with PG&E funding the project-- to trim more than 100 of Fairyland’s big trees while providing a weekend’s worth of programming celebrating the wonderfulness of trees.

I had been told that a portable mill would be set up to process the redwood logs, but being a city girl, I didn’t really know what that meant. Then I saw the beauty of those huge logs being revealed, as some of the arborists turned part of the tree into a lovely table that was raffled off to one of their fellow arborists after all of their work had been done at the park. I was captivated.

I learned that urban tree recycling has been a cottage-type industry for a little over a decade. In California, native forests were cut down for lumber around the turn of the last century; most of the urban trees we see today were planted between the 1950s and the 1970s. Many of them are hardwood. As they reach the end of their lifecycle, someone has to decide what should be done with the wood. Dumping fees are going up (and putting wood in landfills is not the highest and best use), and restrictions on burning wood in fireplaces is increasing as the negative atmospheric effects are discovered, making mulch and firewood look far less attractive than the recycling alternative. 

A kid enjoying a climbing activity during Fairyland's last tree-recycling day.

Black acacia, elm, ash, oaks—they’re all over California, and small, local sawmills can transform the wood into specialty products such as beams, furniture and art that are not only environmentally “green” but also full of meaning because of their local origin.

Urban wood recovery requires that people take an active interest in what happens when they have trees removed. Not every tree is a potential saw log. Not every tree company, of the 30 to 40 in California that do milling, is interested in recycling. Still, trees that are removed on homeowners’ property often contain valuable lumber that can be transformed by local artisans who are actively seeking wood for their next project.

Tree Circus at Aesop's Playhouse: one of the special activities on tree-recycling day.

So what if you have to take a tree out of your yard? First of all, call a certified arborist. Arborists are trained professionals who can tell you whether your tree’s wood can be made into something wonderful. Some of the companies do their own milling, or they can refer you to someone else who can.

Will a gazebo, a table, a playhouse, a countertop or a bench made from your recycled wood be cheaper than buying the wood from Home Depot? Maybe not, but if your family had loved that tree for decades, it just might be a hell of a lot more meaningful.

Turning a Fairyland tree into birdhouses.

And really, just thinking about all those kids whose birdhouses were made from a piece of Fairyland makes me happier than I could have imagined. 

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C.J. Hirschfield has served for 15 years as executive director of Children's Fairyland, where she is charged with the overall operation of the nation's first storybook theme park.