Some members from the community garden pose next to a newly planted Mexican thornelss lime tree

In November 2021 Watsonville Wetlands Watch and the City of Watsonville worked with Heidi from the Loma Vista Community Garden to organize a Fruit Tree Care and Composting Workshop for the community garden members. 19 Fruit trees were givien away including figs, limes, lemons, guavas, and loquats. Some members took trees home and 10 were planted in the community garden space for everyone to share. This is the first workshop that was held at a community garden and WWW hopes to work with other community gardens in the future to increase the ammount of organic fruit available to Watsonville residents. 

CCLI Intern Alan who just finished helping a little boy adopt an Oak tree and looks over at CCLI intern Merrsy as she helps a Watsonville Resident pick out an apple tree

In 2021 Wetlands Watch recieved a donation from a generous person who wants to get 600 fruit trees out to Watsonville residents. During Earth month in April, Wetlands Watch piloted the program by giving away 40 Yellow Pippin Apple trees at the Farmer's markets in the Plaza and Ramsay Park. The highschool interns form the Climate Corps Leadership Institute helped with giving out the trees and sharing tree care information. The trees went quickly as people were excited to learn that they were free. The goal of this program is to help increase access to organic fruit for Watsonville residents and help them live a more sustainable lifestyle. To learn about how growing your own fruit can make your life more sustainable check out our tab Adopt a Fruit Tree: Sustainable Fruits

In July we launched the new Climate Corps Leadership Institute (CCLI). For three weeks we worked with twelve PVUSD highschool students to teach them about meaningful local actions they can do to address global climate change. Two days of the week the students were required to do distance learning work to expand their knowledge about trees, climate change, habitat restoration, green careers, and leadership. The other two days of the week they worked with our staff to plant 60 new trees at the Pajaro Valley Highschool Campus and help with wetland restoration. The students received valuable job training, academic experience, and earned a financial stipend to help support themselves and their families.

We are happy to announce that most of the students will be coming back later this fall to be part of the second cohort of the program. CCLI’s design is the result of our years of  experience providing green jobs training programs and supports our 2020 strategic initiative on Wetlands Actions for Climate Transformation (ACT).   

We are grateful to the many organizations and foundations that are made this program possible, including the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, the Rodgers-Repass Family Foundation, the West Marine Blue Future Fund, and California Releaf and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. 

The Watsonville Urban Forest Revitalization Project, the street and park tree planting project that we have undertaken with the City of Watsonville, was given the 2019 Best Project Award by the California Urban Forest Council. To date our efforts have planted 260 large trees on streets and parks near wetlands throughout the City, hosted 17 community planting events, and has been supported by over 1000 hours of volunteer and community service. We plan to plant many more trees this upcoming winter and are preparing to launch a new project to plant trees on Watsonville school campuses as a part of a climate change education and watershed restoration program for Watsonville youth. Stay tuned for new details on this exciting project, our soon to be launched Adopt-a-tree program, a new web portal for Watsonville’s Urban Forest, and much more!

Best Project Criteria according to California Urban Forests Council

Awarded to an organization or community which completed an urban forestry project that:

• Addressed two or more environmental or public safety issues
• Involved the community and/or other organizations or agencies
• Significantly enhanced the urban forest and livability of the community