What's So Funny About Environmental Education?
An interview with Cass Turnbull, executive director, Plant Amnesty
By Pepper Provenzano
Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of profiles on executive directors and nonprofit organizations that are members of the national Alliance for Community Trees
Seattle-based Plant Amnesty serves up serious environmental stewardship education with a twist. You might say the founding president, Cass Turnbull, is twisted.
In a good way.
"How do you top a tree?" she asks . . . "Tep on the brakes, tupid."
But seriously, folks . . . After 11 years with the Seattle Parks Department, Turnbull started Plant Amnesty in 1987. She is a Washington State certified landscaper, a certified arborist and a master gardener. Beyond Plant Amnesty, she teaches horticulture at Washington State Vocational Schools, lectures widely, and is frequently published and interviewed on the subject of pruning reform. Today Plant Amnesty has 800 members in 43 states and five countries.
Turnbull and her nonprofit organization maintain a sense of humor and good will while speaking out "to end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs."
Plant Amnesty's mission - to end malpruning and improper landscape management practices, and to promote awareness and respect for plants as an integral part of the urban ecology - includes a commitment to educational materials that are clear, current and technically accurate.
But humor may be Turnbull's greatest educational tool. And let's face it, sometimes the urban ecology field can be, well, a bit dry.
"I rant alot," she says. "If you can get people laughing, you can tell them anything, like: Hey, you just butchered your tree."
Being polite doesn't teach people, she says, and just ranting doesn't work. So Turnbull "rants with humor as a subset" of being informative.
Among Plant Amnesty's projects with a humorous bent:
The Slideshow of Pruning Horrors, including the Good, the Bad and the Bizarre, available on video and the web site.
The Tree Biology Pop Quiz: tree care information that saves trees' lives.
Father Weedo Sarducci takes horticultural confessions. Plant Amnesty publishes the top ten.
The Ugly Yard Photo Contest: categories are Bad Tree Pruning, Bad Shrub Pruning, Deadly Dull and Too Bizarre. Yard owners are not notified, that would be rude. Prizes go to photographers.
The Precision Fan-Raking Marching Gardeners Drill Team and a float in local parades.
When TreeLink caught up with Cass, she was working on several projects, including fundraising for office space --
TreeLink: How did this all begin for you? What inspired you?
Turnbull: It began 12 years ago at one of those seventies self-help seminars. Asked to list my pet peeve, then offer solutions, I thought of malpruning, and the solution: an organization - including the name - came to me clearly defined. I mapped it out in, like, six sentences. Organizational structure, media promotion, the works.
TreeLink: So tell us about what gets your goat the most.
Turnbull: Tree topping. It doesn't do anything it's supposed to do. I don't have a problem with fruit-tree pruning or pollarding, which is not a form of malpruning, but even that sets a bad example, because when people see it, they go out and top trees. Here's a quote from an arborist I know: "Topping a tree is like wetting your pants. It may be expedient, but you won't impress anybody and sooner or later you are going to feel very uncomfortable about it."
TreeLink: Explain why urban environmental stewardship is important to all of us.
Turnbull: Well, first of all, it's where we live. And people need to take responsibility for where they live. Second, as studies have shown, if you don't have experience with nature as a child, you grow up fearing it. I was especially lucky as a child. I had a garden and a tree house.
TreeLink: How can nonprofit organizations like Plant Amnesty compliment or benefit the green industry professionals?
Turnbull: Well, my first reaction to the tree-planting movement was like many others': Not one penny more for tree planting until we can care for the trees we already have . . . you know, that's like going out to buy furniture while your house is burning down . . .but I have come to understand, by dealing with tree planters, that this is how a lot of people come to love their trees and care if the trees are neglected or mutilated, so it's their first step to becoming advocates for city budgets to support trees and maintenance budgets.
So a lot of people at first are incensed at amateurs planting in a half-assed manner, and don't want to spend the time, money and effort to teach proper planting and stewardship, but then the nonprofits took on a stewardship education role.
And here's a classic case: If an arborist is staffing an information booth and says tree topping is horrible and you need to hire an ISA-certified arborist (International Society of Arboriculture), it looks like self promotion, but at the nonprofit booth, a bunch of homeowners and gardeners say tree topping is horrible and you need to hire an ISA-certified arborist, then your getting unbiased support for the ISA.
So nonprofits can do something for the "professionals" that the technical pros can't do for themselves: the professionals don't have the time to run a public education campaign. They have businesses to run. But the nonprofits' job is to educate the public, so we're very focused there.
TreeLink: What's missing in the urban and community forestry movement?
I would like to see funds go to breaking up the preconceived notion that the public has, that there isn't much to know about trees that they don't already know, because there's a ton. And as soon as the public understands this, they will be willing to up the tree-care budgets and get arborists on staff to make sure these trees live.
You know, we give away lots of brochures on pruning, but it's amazing how few people pick up our "How to Plant a Tree" brochure. Meanwhile, most trees are still planted wrong. This is one reason Plant Amnesty came up with its "Tree Biology Pop Quiz." It's tree care information that saves trees' lives. You can write Plant Amnesty for a copy.
To find out more about Plant Amnesty and Cass Turnbull, call or write:
Plant Amnesty
906 N.W. 87th St.
Seattle, WA 98117
Phone (206) 783-9813
www.plantamnesty.org