Interview with Tree Amigo Sharon

Dedicated, meaningful and enduring work deserves recognition. To honor our long-time Tree Amigos, we will be sharing a four-part series of blog posts that highlight the personalities, experiences and environmental guidance of our beloved docents Sharon, Carol, Judy and Sarah!

Our first featured Amigo is Sharon.

How long have you been volunteering with Our City Forest?

I have been a Tree Amigo for seven years.

What inspired your interest in the environment and urban forestry?

I have been interested in environmental issues for many years.

What is your favorite thing to do or your favorite part about being a Tree Amigo?

I love planting trees or seedlings knowing that they will grow into beautiful things in the future with love and care. I also like disseminating information to the public about OCF and making them aware of our many wonderful services. I like being among the trees while volunteering at the nursery. It is mini "forest bathing".  Helping customers while they visit the nursery is gratifying and I enjoy giving my time to a worthwhile organization.

Do you have a favorite experience or memory from your time as a Tree Amigo?

My favorite experiences are:  

• Seeing customers at the nursery who are so impressed and delighted with the services OCF provides.

• Telling a visitor at the nursery looking for a tree but didn't want to put any effort into it - no watering, no raking of leaves, no pruning - that he should get a plastic tree!

• Meeting a lot great young AmeriCorps people.

• Making Valentine cards for Andy Frank!

• Through OCF I had my front lawn converted through the lawn buster program.  I now very much enjoy my beautiful drought tolerant landscape.

Sharon’s front yard that was transformed into a drought-tolerant landscape from our Lawnbusters Program.

What is the most important thing or things you have learned from being involved with Our City Forest?

I learned that neighborhoods with trees have less crime. (Didn't realize that before.)  

What message would you want to give your community about environmental stewardship or something else you think is important?

My message to the community would be: (1) Stop buying bottled water! The bottles litter our land and oceans!; (2) Do not litter! Pick up after yourselves!; and (3) Plant a tree to clean the air and give you joy!

What is your favorite plant or tree?

I have many favorite plants: clevelandii sage. I have one in my front yard. It is beautiful and bees love it! Also, purple fountain grass, Mexican feather grass and flax. For trees, autumn fantasy maples, redbuds, pepper trees, coast live oaks and redwoods.

Thank you for all you have done to exemplify OCF's mission, Sharon!

To learn more about our Tree Amigo program and how to become one:

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.