Shortly after we bought our house, one of our neighbors told us about the Tree Trust. They were founded in 1976 in an effort to address the Twin Cities’ deforestation and unemployment problems. They’ve expanded over the past 40 years to offer employment training and environmental education, among other opportunities. Pretty rad, you guys.
North Minneapolis was hit by a devastating tornado in 2011, and the Tree Trust launched a program to re-tree the area that was affected (they have since expanded the program to all of NoMi). The city also planted new trees along the boulevards. Our block was in the tornado’s path, so aside from our boulevard trees, our yard is naked. It’s pretty nuts, actually. The blocks directly to the south and east still have plenty of mature trees, including a couple lining the alley in one of our neighbor’s yards.
Side note: MPR posted a story last year showing the still-visible “tornado scar.”
Several of our neighbors have trees from the Tree Trust now, and soon we will too! They do a free tree distribution program in the fall for NoMi residents (as well as opportunities for Minneapolis and St. Louis Park in the spring where you can purchase a tree). Luckily we heard about it in time to register, and last night we attended a workshop to learn about the program, and about tree maintenance. Obviously the trees will be immature, so we need to be sure to take extra special care of ours over the next few seasons. All we have to do until then is stick a flag in our yard where we want our tree, and the Tree Trust crew will call 811 on our behalf, then they’ll come out and plant the sucker.
Tree recipients were offered a choice from four tree options, and we decided on a Redmond Linden. It’s going in our front yard, which faces west so the tree will get plenty of sun and eventually shade our house. Plus it’s good for pollinators! When the tree is a bit bigger the garden out front will have to be re-tooled and filled with shade loving plants, but it’s basically a weed bed right now anyway which is another topic for later.
I’m so excited for our new baby tree!
fearlessly, myself. 
That is super awesome. 🙂 Do you get to have as many as you want or is there a maximum? Either way, what an incredible program. Kudos to you! We just planted some lilac bushes in our back yard to separate us from our next door neighbor (not that we see them anyways but also give us privacy from that side street too- and in the summer it smells super good!)
You can get two free, but we opted for just one. We can always buy one in the spring, or I think we can get more free ones next year.
Yay lilacs! I want to plant some in out back yard by the fence, but it’ll have to wait.