Just off Mulholland Drive in the heart of Los Angeles, there is a long driveway that leads to a clearing surrounded by trees, with trailers and outbuildings and paths. There are sheds with hanging tools, and a fenced area full of young trees in containers. An open building has demonstration displays on pollution and recycling. An outdoor information kiosk holds pamphlets. A path leads down through the trees to a newly built amphitheater area. As you walk the grounds, you can?t figure out if this is a forest station or a campus or a park. 
     In a way, it?s all three. It?s the home of TreePeople, one of the pioneering organizations in urban and community forestry. The grounds show a combination of practicality, openness, and ingenuity that also characterizes the organization and the people in it. Yet along with the welcoming sense of openness and peace you feel as you walk the paths in the 45-acre TreePeople headquarters, there?s also a buzzing human energy?and the feeling that very big things are about to happen. 
    The work of TreePeople is comprehensive, fascinating and rewarding-the result of a simple path Andy Lipkis started down in the 1970s, and his wife Kate joined him on ten years later. A new Los Angeles may be the result. 

How did this all start? 

TreePeople grew from a seed planted in the heart of a 15-year-old who loved camping in the mountains. "I had a couple of planting experiences that got me turned on," Andy explains, "and I wanted to get other kids to the mountains to plant trees and take care of them." 
    The original thought was to form a summer camp, but the cost was too high. So Andy decided to simply bring trees free of charge to existing summer camps. "The mountain forests were being choked to death by the smog drifting up from the city, and seeing the forests die motivated the kids to act," Andy says. "Later, we would buy bare-root trees from the Department of Forestry and take them to schools and retirement homes to pot the trees in cartons. Teachers loved it, because we were doing an educational process with the kids in the schools. We would then educate the kids in the mountains as they planted trees." 
     Word gradually spread about the activities that Andy called "the project," but Andy spent three years trying and failing to put together an organization that could do a lot of planting. Then a breakthrough came in 1973, through a set of circumstances that originally looked like a disaster. 
     Because the Los Angeles smog was killing the trees in the San Bernardino forest, Andy watched for opportunities to plant smog-resistant trees. He discovered 20,000 smog-resistant redwoods and pines growing in a California Department of Forestry nursery, and offered to plant them on Forest Service land. But the department was required to sell the trees rather than give them away, and they were scheduled to be plowed under if they weren?t sold. The deadline was far too soon for Andy-then a 19-year-old college freshman-to raise the $500 price tag. 
     Rather than giving up in discouragement, Andy described his dilemma to politicians and the media, who helped recue the trees. The media attention, which included a feature story in the Los Angeles Times, "brought in a lot of support from people in small amounts," Andy says, "50 cents or a dollar at times, but it grew to $10,000. Because we had received so much money, we had to incorporate as a nonprofit to protect the money and use it well." Thus TreePeople was born. 

A wider vision 

As a new organization, TreePeople broadened its focus from planting trees in the mountains to community efforts within Los Angeles itself. "We all recognized that we could help the forests directly by planting more smog-tolerant trees," Andy says, "but then there was always a desire to get back to the source of the problem, the pollution that was killing the trees." And planting and caring for trees in the city was a big part of the solution. 
    Although TreePeople at its beginning was a model of early urban forestry, the term "urban forestry" wasn?t commonly used and the term "citizen forester" didn?t exist. TreePeople pioneered this term and fought to use it in education and promotional materials. "Licensed, registered foresters didn?t want anyone else using the term forester," Kate explains. "We picked up the yellow pages and pointed out many examples of the broad use of professional words-you can leaf through and find the term rug doctor. One can?t patent a word like forester." Now the term "citizen forestry" is well used and understood throughout the country. 
     In TreePeople?s lexicon, "citizen forester" has a specific meaning, and one can carry the title only after meeting specific requirements. TreePeople initiated a comprehensive education program called "Citizen Forester Training" that prepares volunteers for this role. "The demands on our citizen foresters are very high," Kate says. "A citizen forester has to have a project in mind, and then go through five training sessions, each lasting from 9 am to 2 pm." Clearly, the training requires far more commitment than "train-and-plant," in which volunteers are shown tree-planting basics before a group planting project.

The Citizen Forester Training is only part of a stress on education at TreePeople-a focus which began even before the organization was founded, as Andy took seedlings to schools so they could be prepared to plant in the San Bernardino mountains. The original training materials Andy prepared have gradually grown into a formal environmental education program, the largest in the country. "The program reaches 90,000 to 100,000 elementary school kids per year in schools," Andy explains, "plus, by the end of the year, we will have had more than a million education contacts with teens." 
    TreePeople has an entire education division, with separate primary and secondary programs that reach students both inside and outside the classroom. The primary curriculum, called The Magical City Forest, gets kids involved in every aspect of the urban ecosystem. "It?s the first urban ecosystem-based program developed, and it?s wildly successful," Kate explains. "It teaches about the natural systems and cycles of the urban forest, from water to air, so kids can begin to learn how forests can fix the broken city ecosystem, and how they can also help by mulching and recycling and saving water." 
     The secondary program, sponsored by the County of Los Angeles, aims at reaching as many teens as possible. "There are classroom sessions, teen conferences and radio ads," Kate says, explaining that the program uses the media to do environmental education wherever kids are. 
     In addition to these curriculum programs, TreePeople?s forestry department also conducts a separate education effort, with workshops that prepare parents, teachers, and kids to plant and care for trees on their school campuses. "This program affects smaller numbers, but with much deeper impact," Andy says. 
     The TreePeople volunteer training programs have recently been revamped and are better than ever before. "We hired a professional trainer to go through our training, assess what we had been doing, and redevelop the training program from the ground up," Kate explains. To gain perspective on their training program, Kate even went through the training again as a volunteer, organizing a planting on the street behind their house and going on to plant at t6hree schools attended by their children. 
     TreePeople?s training experience and perspective has a positive effect that reaches far beyond the organization. TreePeople also co-founded with American Forests the Citizen Forestry Support System (a collection of educational materials and networking resources), a program which is currently compiling a handbook on training programs available throughout the country. The nationwide training survey and compilation-funded by the Forest Service via the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council (NUCFAC)-focuses on finding the urban and community forestry groups across the country who do the most effective training, and then disseminating information on those training programs to assist tree groups that are just starting out or revising their training. "This means they won?t have to reinvent the wheel," Kate explains. "We?ll be highlighting good model training programs, and making the materials available through American Forests." 

Dramatic success and valuable failure 

Over the years, TreePeople has had some profound successes. The organization has also gone through some difficult experiences and failures, and has learned from both the good and the bad. 
     One of TreePeople?s largest efforts was a huge tree planting project on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on January 13, 1990, the anniversary of Dr. King?s birth. Ultimately, 500 trees were planted along the seven miles of the boulevard, with thousands of people turning the street into a living monument to Dr. King. "It?s now eight years later, and it is stunning," Andy says. "We?ve been there every single month for the last eight years conducting maintenance, and the trees are huge and surviving." And the impact of this project went far beyond the trees. "We still hear from people whose lives were changed by that event. For many people, this was the first and only time they?ve participated with TreePeople, and they got a true sense of community involvement." 
     One example of the neighborhood attachment to these trees is the fact that they weren?t vandalized in the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict in 1992. "As a symbolic choice, we had planted a species that would grow back after fires," Andy explains, "but none of the trees were burned, except three that were scorched by a burning building nearby." 
     "I was with a TreePeople board member inspecting one of the scorched trees, when a mailman came over and stopped us, asking us what we were doing to that tree." Andy explained to the concerned man that they were with TreePeople and were trying to do something to save the tree. "The mailman said that his tree was six blocks down and that his entire family had come down to plant it. When something had happened to the tree and it had died, they had replaced the tree," Andy continues. Scores of other examples-including the McDonald?s manager who proudly announced that he was taking care of their tree as he retrieved his bucket from the individual planting-indicate the way that everyday people have taken ownership of these trees in their community. 
     But failure is also appreciated and used by the organization. Andy explains: "I have a profound respect for failures as being critically needed for learning-they?re compost for success. Spending three years trying and failing to start the organization at the beginning built a habit of persistence. This put us in a mode that kept us going for the first few years. When there wasn?t a lot of interest in community forestry, we had to find any wind or breeze that would move our sails." 
     Some of the more painful lessons have been the times when TreePeople has had to lay off staff, growing and shrinking with the economy. Pruning the organization when it has gotten larger than the funds could support "has been extremely painful and has left wounds," Kate says. The lesson? Don?t grow beyond what you can sustain. "This lesson is a philosophy that has kept us from wanting to be a national organization," Andy explains, even though there have been many invitations. "I believe this is profoundly local work, which needs local intelligence if you are to have a successful program. The model is a native tree here in Los Angeles, which will sometimes put down a root as much as 12 feet deep before it puts a leaf out. The opposite is putting nursery stock in, which may or may not survive the local conditions." 

Moving forward to a new Los Angeles 

As TreePeople celebrates its 25th anniversary, the organization is working on a profound local vision-a plan to redesign the city?s infrastructure so that the city can work as a functioning watershed and viable ecosystem. The project is called T.R.E.E.S.: Transagency Resources for Environmental and Economic Sustainability. As Andy explained in an interview in The Planning Report, "It is possible to reduce L.A.?s water importation by at least 50%, alleviate and prevent major flooding, help clean up our polluted bays and beaches, substantially reduce the waste stream, and create thousands of new jobs-all while having government work more efficiently." 
     How will all this happen? By getting all the related agencies to work together, using the crystallizing vision and science of urban forestry as a catalyst. "We saw that with all the agencies involved in managing the urban environment, none of them saw it as a whole ecosystem. As a result, millions of dollars are wasted," Andy says. 
     The first step was a design conference in May of last year, sponsored by TreePeople with cooperation from the Southern California Metropolitan Water District, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the City of Santa Monica, the City of Los Angeles, and the L.A. County Department of Public Works. Leading engineering firms, architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and urban foresters came from across the country for five days to analyze specific problems and propose specific solutions. Using five site models-single-family home, multi-family complex, school, commercial property, and industrial area-design teams met to propose plans that would meet reasonable targets for water retention, run-off mitigation, cooling cost reductions, and green waste reduction. 
     The other components of the project include: 

• detailed descriptions of best management practices based on the plans of the design teams, 
• a single-family demonstration site using these best management practices, 
• a cost-benefit model that examines the benefits, cost savings, and economic opportunities potentially available through implementing best management practices, and 
• an implementation plan that will help government officials put the entire program into motion. 

Seeds of love 

The work and vision of TreePeople weaves Andy and Kate together in many ways. And in fact, the 25th anniversary of TreePeople coincides with the 15th anniversary for the Lipkises-a coincidence charged with meaning. 
     Before I interviewed the Lipkises, I was intrigued by the short description of how they met in their book, The Simple Act of Planting a Tree, and I wanted to know more. How was the TreePeople work intertwined with their romance and marriage? 
     It?s a personal question, but Kate and Andy are glad to oblige me with an answer. "I originally wasn?t drawn to tree planting work at all," Kate explains, "although I had gone through a personal transformation in my life and was drawn to service work." Her work with the Melbourne Hunger Project led her to be invited to a traveling conference with presentations by alternative thinkers in medicine, the environment, and personal growth. 
     "I saw Andy?s face in the flyer and thought ?He looks really interesting.? Then I saw him at the conference, asking about a native tree nursery in the area. My dad knew about trees, so I went over and talked to him. We met and fell rapidly in love in about a minute," Kate laughs. They went to dinner during the conference, but then Andy left town and neither of them knew if anything would develop. But a few days later, Andy had to fly back to Melbourne and then Sydney. Kate met him at the Melbourne airport to say hello and "instead, I hopped on the plane with him and traveled to Sydney for several days." 
     Her spontaneous act puzzled the folks at the Melbourne airport when they saw her car parked in short-term parking day after day, and it made a dramatic change in both of them. When Kate first met Andy she wasn?t looking for romance (she was already engaged to be married), but her father had told her she hadn?t yet met the person she would marry. After she returned from Sydney and told them all about Andy, her father said, "That?s the one." 
     In a strange coincidence, a few weeks before the conference her dad had been moved by a condensed version of Jean Giono?s beautiful novel The Man Who Planted Trees, and read it into tape and asked Kate to listen to it. "I couldn?t figure out why dad had given me this tape, and I listened to the novel and thought-it?s a great story, but so what?-and then two weeks later I met Andy." 

Deep satisfaction-and hearty risks 

The couple?s work together with TreePeople has brought "the deep, deep satisfaction of seeing communities and lives changed for the better," Andy says. "Two people have joined city councils, who had not been on any political path, for example. You see people who have changed their careers and their lives as a result of working with TreePeople." 
     Kate adds, "You just do what you do, because you know that somehow or other it will do some good, but the enormity of the change isn?t with you all the time. The impact becomes clearer when we tour the country, on the book tour or at conferences. You see that somehow you?ve been the right person in the right path, that something you have said has sparked something for people." 
     The rewards of community involvement extend to the Lipkis?s children, Phoebe, 11, and Henry, 5. "We?re very proud of how Phoebe embodies this work," Kate says. "It?s a part of her and her very being." Phoebe?s intense involvement may partly come from the fact that her early years were mostly spent around TreePeople. "When I had her, I was very involved with TreePeople-I basically spat her out and kept going." (Now Kate is less involved in the day-to-day operations of TreePeople and is spending the majority of her time with the children.) Phoebe?s school may become one of the model schools for the school greening project underway, and Phoebe has volunteered to be the student leader for the project. Kate says, laughing, "When Phoebe volunteered, her teacher said, ?Was there any question who would lead this project??" 
     The ramifications of Andy and Kate?s involvement with TreePeople become clear as Andy muses on the alternative. "Imagine being people who did things that didn?t count in the world. We get all the goodies for having lives that have made a difference. It?s a huge benefit, and there?s also a cost. Because of this work, we couldn?t be a part of the collective conspiracy of the belief that we don?t make a difference. When you see pain and need, it?s easiest to shut it down and turn away by saying that ?I don?t have to feel that, or respond to that, because there is nothing I can do about it.? But when you allow yourself to become involved, you have to pay attention and respond." As Andy describes it, one sees a clear picture of a cycle with ever deepening levels of commitment, risk?and joy. 
     Andy also makes it clear that it doesn?t take extraordinary talents or resources to achieve miracles. "Phoebe was in a dad?s and daughter?s workshop with me," Andy says, "and was talking about her future and her view of herself and the world, and with total confidence she said, ?Given what you have done and created, I feel that my brother and I can also do anything.? And that is true! You?ll find that we are not remarkable people in terms of privilege or skills or intellect. So much of the learning and the power comes from just getting on a path and doing it." 
     From a single tree planting to a new Los Angeles, Andy and Kate?s story makes it clear that walking the path is well worth the risk.