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Neighborhood trees

Salt Lake City's Avenues neighborhood hosts their street fair every September.
Cristy Meiners
/
KUER
Salt Lake City's Avenues neighborhood hosts their street fair every September.

Local street fairs celebrate the character of neighborhoods all over the country, from the Snowy Owl Market in Maine’s Presque Isle to the Solano Stroll in Berkeley, California.

As a Salt Lake City resident, I look forward to my street fair in the Avenues, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.

I see street fairs as a perfect opportunity to celebrate our many beautiful street trees, which provide the event’s green backdrop. Salt Lake City has the largest urban forest between Denver and Sacramento, with 90,000 trees on public land, and many more on private property.

Two trees that festival-attendees will find in my neighborhood are the ash and the Norway maple. Ashes are tall and majestic, with feather-like foliage and furrowed bark, but we're at some risk of losing them. In the Eastern U.S., ash trees have been decimated by an invasive beetle, the Emerald Ash Borer. This insect is moving west and is now in Colorado, so Utah should appreciate their beauty now.

The Norway maple, on the other hand, is the most frequently planted street tree in the country. Why so common?  It’s well suited for urban settings, with a rapid growth rate, desirable size and the capacity to withstand urban impacts like air pollution, intense sun and ice.

When you visit your own street fair to choose the perfect scarf for your sister or to buy a jar of homemade jelly for your neighbor, take a moment to look up! And celebrate both our arboreal and our human communities.

KUER will be at the 2024 Avenues Street Fair on Saturday, Sept. 14, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on 3rd Avenue between D and I Streets in Salt Lake City. Stop by and say hello!

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is an emeritus professor of both The Evergreen State College and the University of Utah, one of the world’s leading ecologists and a popular science communicator. Dr. Nadkarni’s research and public engagement work is supported by the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. @nalininadkarni
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