Brooks: Tree Trust trains young Minnesotans to go out on a limb with their careers

The trees in your city look different when you’re the one planting them.

Tree Trust has planted hundreds of thousands.

It’s work that doesn’t stop when the snow flies and the ground is too cold to dig. So on a frigid December afternoon, Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway echoed with the buzz of chain saws and the creak of timbers as a Tree Trust crew pruned the trees and brush, cut back invasive species and freed saplings from strangling vines. All the hard jobs it takes to keep the metro evergreen.

Caring for an urban forest means taking care to train the next generation of skilled workers who are drawn to hard, rewarding jobs out in the cold and the heat and the rain.

“A program like this really changes how you view the outdoors,” said arborist-in-training Gianna Broadhead, taking a break from stacking logs taller than herself in tidy piles beside the greenway. She lives near the Mississippi River and now, when she walks by its banks, she can identify trees on sight, spot the invasive species and marvel at the old-growth giants.

Broadhead and her teammates are in the final weeks of Tree Trust’s Branches program — a 10-week paid apprenticeship in tree care and landscaping, under the supervision of experienced staff.

This has been Tree Trust’s dual mission since the nonprofit was founded almost 50 years ago. Minneapolis neighborhoods, decimated by Dutch elm disease, needed trees. The city’s teens and young adults needed work.

The idea of an office job didn’t appeal to Broadhead, but Tree Trust’s mission statement did: transforming lives and landscapes.

“It’s kind of corny,” she said, “but I think this program definitely changed my life — for the better.”

Over the weeks, she learned she likes working outside; likes working with chain saws and heavy equipment; likes having a team at her back. Most of all, she likes feeling that she’s doing something tangible to help her community.

Between the stumps and pruned branches, the arborists could see signs of a healthier urban landscape. Raspberry bushes where there used to be buckthorn. Serviceberry and oak seedlings instead of noxious weeds.

Above the Branches work crew loomed the hulk of the old Smith Foundry that had belched acrid fumes into the East Phillips neighborhood for generations. The factory closed for good this summer rather than comply with basic air quality standards. The trees and underbrush the Branches crew trimmed that week will allow the trees that remain to grow straight and healthy, eventually screening the view of the factory’s rusty chain link fence behind wildflowers and honey locusts.

Over the summer, vandals uprooted 60 saplings that Tree Trust and a team of high school students had planted along the St. Paul riverfront.

You may have heard about it. The people who make the world worse get more attention than the people trying to make it better.

The bigger story is that Tree Trust planted 715 trees in St. Paul in the spring and 850 more in the fall. Their crews will replace the trees the vandals destroyed — trees that will improve our air quality and shade our neighborhoods through increasingly hot summers. And thanks to training programs like Branches, there should be certified arborists around to care for them for decades.

“I like to joke that planting a tree is essentially like having a 100-year-old pet,” said senior trainer Emily Cleaver-Gillett, watching her trainees navigate the steep banks of the greenway with ropes and chain saws. “You have to take care of it its entire life.”

Ten weeks pass quickly, but it’s time enough to give the 18- to 28-year-olds who enroll in the Branches program a solid grounding in safety, technique, employment skills, and how to disassemble and repair a chain saw in the middle of a snowy jobsite. Even in the middle of winter, there’s a waiting list to get into the program — and employers waiting to hire graduates afterward.

“Participants in this program get a chance to work, learn and leave their mark — improving the communities they’re a part of,” said senior trainer Keegan McKye. For him, the best moments on the job are when he watches a trainee realize they love this work, and even better, they’re good at it. “People absolutely find their stride and it’s just a joy to see that happen.”

Gus Pirko, a recent college graduate, had taken a few courses in dendrology — the scientific study of trees — before applying to the Branches program for some hands-on education.

“I might be a little more interested in planting and community forestry-type stuff than taking them down,” he added, but he enjoyed the challenge of learning how to cut down a tree: “How complex it can be, how to think about the physics behind it.”

He already had a job interview lined up with a tree care company.

“I know tree work’s important, and trees are very beneficial in urban spaces — and there are a lot of jobs around that,” he said. More importantly, it turns out, “I love doing tree work.”