Life as a Docent at the Community Nursery

We couldn't Plant it Forward without our volunteers!

Sarah Viaggi at OCF's Spring Plant Sale Extravaganza 2016.

The docents at Our City Forest’s Community Nursery--Carol Arnoldy, Sharon Schuetze, Sarah Viaggi, and Judi Wilson--are volunteers who help customers during the nursery’s open hours, which are 9:00 am to 12:00 pm Thursday through Saturday. In addition to showing visitors the trees and shrubs they wish to plant, and discussing which species are best for their needs--an important task considering that the nursery covers two acres and has an inventory of some 10,000 trees and other plants--the docents assist with ongoing nursery work, namely pruning, propagation, weeding, watering, and updating inventory records.

Judi Wilson writing up a receipt for a resident at the Fall Plant Sale Bonanza 2016.

As nursery manager Nara Baker puts it, “It’s cool to have people at OCF who have been there for so many years and know its programs and practices as well as the docents do. They are always willing to help, and are a great example for OCF’s younger members.”

Carol Arnoldy talking to residents at the Community Nursery.

Why the docents continue to volunteer year after year comes down to two shared desires: they are dedicated to OCF’s mission of greening San Jose, and they enjoy being at the nursery.  As Carol says, “I love gardening, being outdoors, learning about how things grow, and being with like minded people.” What more could one want in a volunteer position?

Sarah, who formerly worked as a registered dietitian and is a sailing enthusiast, clearly is in her element. She calls her backyard at her South San Jose home “Big Basin” because it has a stand of six coastal redwoods, two apple trees, an apricot tree, a volunteer hackberry, volunteer pistache, Douglas fir, and wisteria.  The most recent addition to her yard is a live oak.

Sarah up front on the right during her Tree Amigo class in Winter 2015.

She enjoys working with nursery customers: “I make customers think about what they want. The tree they choose is going to be with them for many years to come, so they better get it right.”  She ticks off the attributes a prospective tree owner needs to consider, for starters, adaptability to the desired planting site, function, size when mature, messiness, deciduous vs. evergreen, and attractiveness.  Sarah also loves working with the “young folks,” the AmeriCorps members who comprise the nursery team.

Sharon Schuetze at the Community Nursery's open hours.

Sharon, who became a Tree Amigo five years ago, shares Sarah’s enjoyment of helping visitors.  “I enjoy interacting with the nursery patrons and telling them about OCF programs.” She is a gardener, and her enjoyment of the nursery extends to caring for its trees and shrubs. Sharon quips that she likes “digging in dirt,”  a pleasure not uncommon among OCF members, especially on the Lawn Busters team. She finds working outside therapeutic: “Being in nature and among trees calms one’s soul.”  She is a regular hiker of Bay Area trails, especially in the spring when wild flowers are prevalent in the meadows.

Sharon propagating grasses with former AmeriCorps Service Members in 2015.

Judi, who completed the Tree Amigo class in 1994 and has volunteered at OCF intermittently ever since, also loves being outside among trees. When I see Judi at the nursery she almost always has a pair of pruners in one hand and cuttings in the other.

Judi Wilson watering trees recently potted at the Community Nursery during bare root season.

Judi recalls the early days of OCF when volunteers were urged to bring their own shovels to planting and the nursery was situated at small, temporary sites in Japantown, Watson Park, and Kelly Park. She speaks fondly of participating in the planting of 30 Chinese Pistache trees in 1995 at Guadalupe Park to create the AIDS Memorial Grove.  “Metal tags honoring AIDS victims were hung on the branches. Basketball players from Santa Clara University used their height to put the tags high in the trees.”

AIDS Memorial Grove Planting - 1995

AIDS Memorial Grove - 2009

As one would expect, each of the women is a strong advocate of OCF’s mission. Carol, who began volunteering at OCF in 2001 is a Tree Amigo herself, and has lived in San Jose since it was called “the Garden City.” She sees OCF as restoring some of the city’s greenness that once was everywhere; the urban forest is “a way to combat the onslaught” of development in Silicon Valley.  Judi notes that OCF’s beautification of San Jose is not limited to planting street trees; it extends to parks, businesses, churches, and schools among other venues. She cautions that beauty is only one benefit of urban trees. She points out that OCF educates the public on the many ways in which trees are important: they help clean the air and are a habitat for birds and animals; they provide shade and psychological balm; they increase real property values.

Tree Amigo Carol Arnoldy working in the Greenhouse at the Community Nursery

Sarah remembers walking in her neighborhood with her husband several years ago and noting the absence of trees. “This isn’t right;” she said at the time. “We live in a parking lot!” Sarah accordingly launched a successful community tree planting in her neighborhood in fall of 2015.

Tree Amigo Sarah Viaggi is presented with a Thank You card by AmeriCorps Service Member Maggie after her successful neighborhood planting in 2015.

Sharon, too, has brought OCF to where she lives: Lawn Busters converted her front lawn last fall, and she “now enjoys a drought-tolerant landscape.” In addition, she has two OCF trees planted in her yard - ‘Autumn Fantasy’ red maples.

Sharon, on the far left, re-took the Tree Amigo course last winter as a refresher to brush up on her OCF knowledge.

With their belief in taking action, it’s fair to characterize the docents as activists, although certainly not with the negative connotations the word sometimes carries, such as quarrelsome and doctrinaire. They are gracious, friendly women who volunteer because they know personal initiative makes a big difference.

They know, too, that, passiveness--not doing anything--is the friend of parking lots.

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Now it's your turn!

Our City Forest is always looking for more Judi’s, Carol’s, Sharon’s, or Sarah’s - locals who care and can dedicate time each week to helping us grow and reach the community! If you’re interested in becoming a Tree Amigo, start volunteering with OCF. Sign up for a community planting, volunteer at the nursery, help a lawn conversion project, join tree care on a watering route, or help us with some office work. Learn more at ourcityforest.org/volunteer or email volunteer@ourcityforest.org and let us know what you’re interested in doing.

The Remarkable Pat Pizzo

Patrick Pizzo is a man of many accomplishments. Pat created an acclaimed display of California native plants in his neighborhood that stretches for six-tenths of a mile. He continues to care for over 100 native oaks that he and his neighbors planted in 1994 with Our City Forest (OCF). He had a big role in restoring and improving Jeffrey Fontana and TJ Martin parks after Pacific Gas & Electric launched a campaign to cut down 140 trees. Pat is also a longtime Tree Amigo with OCF and a teacher--he is a retired professor of engineering materials at San José State University and presently a volunteer math tutor at Branham High School. If these accomplishments are not enough, Pat once received a Green Thumb Award from the Air Force for planting pumpkins at one of its bases.

Speaking with Pat about his many fascinating achievements.

Tim Fillpot, my fellow AmeriCorps Service Member and photographer, and I caught up with Pat near his home on Capitancillos Drive in Almaden. When we arrived, he was tending to his Native Plant Walk, a garden of shrubs native to California chaparral that he began planting in 2002 after retiring from SJSU. The garden follows the undeveloped side of Capitancillos across from his house. It is adjacent to a meadow that runs along the Guadalupe River and adds more color to the neighborhood with wild flowers. The garden showcases drought-resistant landscaping and provides gardeners with ideas for their own landscapes. As of March, 2009, the garden has some 110 different species, each neatly labeled.

Pat has added color and interest to the neighborhood with wild flowers, such as this fine example of Dendromecon harfordii (Island brush poppy).

As of March, 2009, the garden has some 110 different drought-tolerant, neatly-labeled species.

The garden is placed among a line of 126 native oaks, mostly Quercus agrifolia, i.e.,California Live Oak. The trees were planted in 1994 by Oak Canyon residents in cooperation with Our City Forest, which, at that time, was in its first year of operation. Pat participated in the planting, but that was only the beginning of his involvement with the oaks, which has spanned almost 23 years. Since their planting he has watered the trees, pruned them (by his count six times since 1994 and most recently just a few months ago), painted their lower trunks to prevent bleaching, and planted replacements when some of the original trees didn’t survive. In 2003, his daughter purchased a large wagon at Orchard Supply Hardware for him to transport water more easily to the trees and shrubs. He recalls, “I crammed the wagon with jugs of water and pulled it down the street.”  A few years later, Pat and his neighbors began connecting long hoses, which they attached to homeowners’ faucets along the watering route. During the drought in 2014, they stopped watering entirely. “The oaks are drought-resistant natives,” Pat says, “and it was time for them to be on their own.” They are managing their own lives just fine.

126 native trees line Capitancillos Drive near Pat's home, planted by Oak Canyon residents in cooperation with Our City Forest.

Pat is a California native himself. He was born and raised in Willow Glen (on Norval Way to be exact) and attended Willow Glen High School before moving on to San José State and Stanford. His interest in gardening came early.  When he was six years old he crawled through the hedge on the border of his family’s home and and asked permission from his neighbor to start a vegetable garden. “My plot was about 12’ X 12’, and I shared what I grew with the people next door.”

Recalling that his father planted trees on land he owned at Alma and Minnesota that served as a “ranch,” Pat says that gardening “must run in my family’s blood.” His father used a planting technique that most would consider unorthodox today: he seated bare-rooted young trees in muddy ground. Pat thinks “the method is probably European in origin, maybe German or Polish.” However unusual it may seem now, the method worked: the trees his father planted in the ground can still be seen today.

Pat with one of the oak trees for which he has proudly cared for nearly 23 years.

Later, when Pat was an Air Force officer at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento County, his father gave him a generous supply of pumpkin seeds. The military seems like an unlikely place for a gardener to indulge his or her passion, much less win an award for it, but Pat was an exception. He planted the seeds everywhere on the base: outside the chapel and PX, by the commanding general’s quarters, and along the runways. They grew famously, and the Air Force gave Pat a Green Thumb Award.

Thanks to Pat's efforts, many trees were saved and restored at the Jeffrey Fontana and TJ Martin Parks.

In 2010 PG&E began cutting down trees earmarked for removal at Jeffrey Fontana and TJ Martin parks. High voltage power lines run the 1.2 mile length of the parks, and PG&E had tired of pruning trees that eventually would grow into them. Residents in the area were outraged at the loss and responded by forming the Martin-Fontana Association for which Pat chaired the important Restoration and Improvement Committee. The upshot of the Association’s work was that it saved some of the threatened trees and partnered with Our City Forest in a succession of plantings to replace ones that had been lost. Dozens of native shrubs were planted as well, and PG&E even raised the height of its power lines to accommodate the new trees.

No doubt there are other instances in which Pat was an energetic advocate for the urban forest and open space (one is his opposition in 2008 to the commercial development of the San José Fairground site, which he feared would result in “an economically-challenged Santana Row”).  An infomercial host, in presenting the highlights of Pat’s work in the community, inevitably would say, “But wait! There’s more!”

And there is: Pat, as noted earlier, is a volunteer tutor at Branham High School. He also is the steward of 27 trees, half of which are Quercus douglasii (Blue oak), that Our City Forest helped plant in January 2016 along the fence by Branham High’s football field. Until the rains began last month, an OCF truck hauling the 500 gallon “Buffalo” came to BHS every other Friday.  Pat and a group of eight or ten students would meet the truck and draw water into five gallon buckets from the Buffalo. Each young tree then received its biweekly ration of three buckets.

Quercus douglasii overlooking the track and football field Branham High School.

One of the Branham High School students working with Pat to water trees near the football field.

I remarked to Pat how impressed I was with the students; they carry out their watering duties efficiently and earnestly.  He replied, “Yes! They make me feel good about our future.”

Photography by Timothy Fillpot

Update (January 7th, 2020):

It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of our dear friend and exemplary Tree Amigo, Pat Pizzo. His passion for California native plants, our urban canopy, and our local parks was admired by many. He was known for gathering other community members to partake in planting trees alongside him and for rallying others around the cause of environmental stewardship. His many accomplishments and lasting impact on our community will surely be remembered amongst those who worked with him, and his legacy lives on in our urban landscape.

The staff, AmeriCorps Members, and board of Our City Forest are grateful to Pat and to the many other remarkable community members like him who continue to propel our mission forward and make our community greener and healthier for future generations.