Jacqueline Chao is an art educator & DTLA local- we are lucky that she is also a volunteer here at IDG. During one of our recent conversations about trees, she mentioned that in the Chinese culture, different species have unique symbolism. Intrigued, we asked her if she would guest write a blog post on the subject. Read on to learn more, written by Jacqueline...

We had a productive day mapping trees with the help of several energetic volunteers! We would like to thank our host, the Arts District Community Council LA, partner TreePeople & The Bread Lounge for supplying such delicious treats. This was all to "map" the existing trees in the lower Arts District, using the new TreeMapLA program. We mapped over 150 trees today!

So - We have big news! We have recently received some funding from the Historic Cultural Neighborhood Council to start up our Maintenance Program.  With this funding we will be able to do a quarterly maintenance and water run this year for 37 Arts District trees that were planted a year ago.  

In the mean time just as volunteers - Katherine and I have been working hard to make sure all of our trees are surviving, getting watered, not having people lock their bikes to the trees, and re-staking- re-staking- re-staking.  

Here are some pictures of this past months maintenance work that we've been keeping on -top of.  

Tree Emergency - the stakes broke or were hit by something and this Crape Myrtle was so top heavy it fell right over.  So - on a Saturday night I had to do a run for supplies and re-stake our little friend.  

AFTER

REMOVING A LOW HANGING TREE LIMB AT THE ARTS DISTRICT DOG PARK. 

THANKS TO OUR FELLOW TREE PERSON CAROLYN PAXTON FOR HELPING WITH THIS SIGN.  SOMEONE KEPT LOCKING THEIR BIKE TO THIS POOR TREE.  

 Thank you Zinc Cafe for letting me use your water source to water our three orphaned trees on Mateo.