Tree Wizards : Andy and Katie Lipkis Saw a Grass-Roots Urban Greenery Program Sprout in L.A.; Now They Want to Plant Offshoots All Over

Homer Worf organized his West Los Angeles neighbors to help plant, stake and tie eight carrotwood trees in their parkway strip on Ceilhunt Avenue.

Eudora Russell of Baldwin Hills enlisted 80 volunteers to plant Ficus nitida, paint two decrepit buildings and put a ground cover of flowers on a weedy, trashy section of South La Brea.

Vici Alimahomed of El Segundo helped transform a blighted city-owned hill on Imperial Boulevard into a vibrant California ecosystem, with 240 drought-tolerant plants, including Christmas berry and Catalina cherry trees, redbud and lemonade berry shrubs and a ground cover of buckwheat, woolly blue curls and sage.

Dolores Reece coordinated about 100 volunteers in the planting of 19 Bradford pear trees on a barren strip in the 5900 block of Sawyer Street on the Westside. “If that’s not a spiritual experience, I don’t know what is, “ she says of the project.

And each did it by the book, following their step-by-step training as TreePeople Citizen Foresters.

Although it might seem quaintly incongruous that Southern California urbanites such as Reece, Alimahomed, Russell and Worf would be so concerned about plants and trees, Andy and Katie Lipkis know the volunteers’ environmental efforts amount to more than a neighborhood do-good-ism.

They see it as planting the seeds of a green revolution.

The husband-wife team hopes to do nothing less than change the world. And their credentials as directors of TreePeople--a Los Angeles environmental group that has grown from a one-man operation to a global presence in the last 20 years--suggest their vision is worth serious consideration.

Their environmental Magna Carta is a new book that co-writers Andy and Katie will promote nationwide starting Monday. It has a long but telling title--”The Simple Act of Planting a Tree: A Citizen Forester’s Guide to Healing Your Neighborhood, Your City, and Your World.”

In brief, its message is “You can do it,” Andy Lipkis said. TreePeople are preaching environmental empowerment through personal action.

The glossy, 236-page paperback is a hands-on compilation of social history, ecology, success stories, resource lists, philosophy, personal essays, pop eco-psychology and humor.

It has much say to about planting and caring for trees. But, more important, the book also offers a detailed guide to action, including a 45-page model for organizing a neighborhood based on the TreePeople Citizen Forester program.

That program and others offered by the busy group--which has grown so rapidly during the past two years that the telephones in the TreePeople offices ring every 41 seconds on weekdays--have captivated a growing number of activists.

A typical convert is Worf, a buyer for an aerospace company who made his debut in June as a Citizen Forester.

He took the TreePeople course three years ago because he “believes in the value of trees,” he explained. “I’ve planted as a volunteer in Altadena, North Hollywood and downtown,” he said. “I wanted to have my own planting.”

He found his opening by knocking on doors for the North Westdale Neighborhood Watch. “You meet your neighbors doing this, and people said they’d like more trees,” he said.

He followed his Citizen Forester manual step-by-step, from the first meeting with a city inspector to enlisting neighbor Carol Miller as an assistant, from organizing the neighbors to recruiting TreePeople volunteers, buying trees and root barriers and sending watering instructions to residents.

The planting itself took place on a hot Saturday in June, and the positive energy released at the event still pleases and amazes Miller.

“I was flabbergasted at the turnout,” she said. “We had about 30 TreePeople volunteers, and they came from as far away as Camarillo. There were young couples and single women, and men and women of all ages. One man had his 80th birthday coming up. They wore Kelly-green T-shirts and brought all their equipment in a truck. They were extremely well organized--it was a hot day, the ground was hard, and they worked in teams digging holes.

“We served cookies and soft drinks, and a neighborhood doughnut shop contributed doughnuts,” she recalled. “Lots of people strolled over to watch. There is something that generates within a community when you plant trees. I didn’t realize what a great satisfaction planting a tree can be.

“And,” she added, “the ultimate plus is that trees are nature’s way of replenishing the environment. In our little neighborhood here, we could make quite a difference.”

That is just what the Lipkises--whose work has won them national media exposure, environmental awards and worldwide requests to share their expertise--preach in their book.

That work “is about community--establishing it, tapping into it, and using it to nurture responsibility for our global environment,” they write.

Besides offering a detailed self-help guide for city dwellers who feel powerless to deal with the pollution, concrete, graffiti and social isolation of faulty urban planning, the Lipkises argue that an urban forest produces such benefits as cooling, shading and cleansing the air through the absorption of carbon dioxide. Trees and shrubs, they say, can cut air-conditioning costs, prevent erosion and provide sources of food and beauty.

They can help, too, in healing not only ravaged environments but also damaged psyches. In reconnecting with nature, they contend, Americans can reconnect with their own power, tapping a new vitality by recycling their energy into community projects.

“This book is everything we know,” Katie Lipkis said as she and her husband prepared last week for a 17-city book tour. With orders of 27,000 copies, publisher Jeremy P. Tarcher, has “big plans” for the $12.95 book, including a 120-city radio campaign and a joint promotion with the makers of energy-efficient Geo cars, said Robert Welsch, the firm’s marketing director.

Royalties will go to the nonprofit TreePeople, headquartered in a compound atop Mulholland Drive at Coldwater Canyon Park. The mountaintop complex, a rustic sprawl of low tan buildings and nurseries under a shaggy fringe of redwoods and eucalyptuses, housed a fire station in the 1920s. Its present air of pastoral bustle contributes to the TreePeople’s image as being laid-back and resourceful.

In conversation, Andy and Katie Lipkis (president and vice president of TreePeople, respectively) enhance the image.

The health-poster wholesome couple met in 1983 when he spoke about TreePeople at a conference in Melbourne, Australia, where she was a successful advertising copywriter. They have since shared their work, always talking and writing about tree-planting with the passion of the newly converted.

“What’s exciting is that there really is potent material here,” Andy Lipkis said. “People are hungry for information about what to do about taking care of the environment. We’ve heard it all the way from school kids to the White House.” Their thesis, that planting trees can transform a community, is based on their experience as hands-on urban environmentalists.

“We’ve been making a profound investment in people,” said Andy Lipkis, who launched TreePeople in 1973 with a public request for help in planting 8,000 trees in the San Bernardino National Forest. “All the people we work with seem to get nurtured by putting their physical energy back into the planet.”

The nonprofit group has a staff of 34, a budget of $1.2 million, and a track record of big projects, ranging from Africa fruit tree plantings to an education program that last year introduced 107,000 students to environmental and recycling principles and sent each home with a Canary Island pine seedling (a drought-resistant species) and planting instructions.

TreePeople now has 18,500 Los Angeles members (dues are $25 a year) and a corps of 500 volunteers who clocked 20,000 hours last year doing everything from tree planting to public speaking.

Its volunteers have also been mobilized for disaster-relief work in the 1978 and 1980 Southern California floods and to evacuate books after the 1986 Central Library fire. “Volunteerism is the basis of our strength,” Andy Lipkis said.

Although TreePeople’s growth has been steady since its birth, interest in the group has exploded in the last two years. “I think it happened with the realization of the greenhouse effect,” Katie Lipkis said. “It removed the environment from a local issue and made it global.” As global warming looms larger, the notion of planting trees, with their air-cleansing properties, has graduated from an Arbor Day nicety to a global imperative.

And without benefit of a public relations budget or press agent, Andy and Katie Lipkis have become folk heroes. A swell of Earth Day coverage reported “200 million trees planted” and the story of how Andy found his life’s work when, as a 15-year-old summer camper, he transformed a patch of land by planting trees in a parking lot.

Although such validation is rewarding, they are wary of being idealized, Katie said, adding, “the mythology works against our goal.’

Her husband agreed: “I’m not a hero and we really aren’t comfortable with those mega-tree numbers. This stuff--planting and taking care of your environment--is so basic and so real, and there is so much benefit for anybody . . . when I get made bigger than life, a lot of things happen. People start to exclude themselves. I’m not that big, I’m not a hero and we really aren’t comfortable with those mega-tree numbers.

“Our job,” he emphasized, “is to educate and train people. The question about how many trees we have planted--and there is no way to estimate-- perpetuates the wrong myth.”

They describe themselves as just folks with a house, a mortgage, a daughter, Phoebe, 4, and a dog.

“People are really shocked to hear that Andy doesn’t have a degree in biology or that I had never planted a tree until I met him,” Katie said. “We haven’t given up materialism and we haven’t given up having a regular life.. . . It’s a different sort of ‘having-it-all.’ ”

Although TreePeople received acclaim for planting 1 million trees for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and its Citizen Foresters chalked up 20 neighborhood projects, with 1,700 trees, last year in Los Angeles, the group’s thinking has moved away from numbers.

The notion of just planting a tree has been replaced by one of planting and caring for a tree, because that’s the full prescription, the Lipkises said.

Cor Trowbridge, who manages TreePeople’s five-session Citizen Forester training course (fee is $50 and scholarships are available), now in its fourth year, said more and more people are not only accepting that idea but embracing it.

“We want serious applicants because there is a lot of work involved,” she said. “They are learning to organize a community to plant and care for trees.” Although planting trees on private property is the easier approach, many people sign up for the rigorous training because they envision a tree-lined neighborhood.

“That’s important to the American psyche,” Trowbridge said. “It implies a sense of neighborhood. It makes a statement that the place is cared for, that people are outside and around, not huddling in their houses waiting for the next vandal to strike. It indicates that neighbors are on lookout for each other.”

There is no profile of the individual who is attracted to the training program, which is offered in the spring and fall. But one “must” is neighborhood involvement, she said. “Just going to a street and plunking trees into the ground won’t work: They will be vandalized.”

Once on their own, Citizen Foresters can call on TreePeople for support, tools and trained volunteers.

“TreePeople are generous with their knowledge,” said Cathy Luijt of Montebello, who has planted trees at her son’s school but focuses on public education efforts, such as the oft-shown video “What Is a Tree” that she produced with her sister, Olga.

Luijt has founded a local tree-planting group called TreeMendUS and, working with the Montebello Parks and Recreation Department, has received an Urban Wildlife Fund grant for three plantings in 1991. She is also developing a proposal for a community garden and nursery in Montebello.

“I don’t think you can do any of these projects without those little bits and pieces of information (TreePeople) give you to make these programs work,” she said.

Environmental professionals also praise the Lipkises and their TreePeople approach.

“Andy Lipkis and I have been involved with each for 15 years,” said Bob Kennedy, superintendent of the Los Angeles Department of Public Works’ Street Tree Division. “I’ve seen TreePeople grow from virtually nothing to a very supportive organization.

“We are the professionals, and there is nothing wrong with having support,” said Kennedy, who, along with a 270-member staff, oversees the city’s urban forest, a mammoth spread of 680,000-plus street trees encompassing 1,000 varieties and spanning seven climate zones, from beach to desert, with soils ranging from sandy loam to shale. “TreePeople play an important teaching role, and their training program is probably one of best in the country. It involves what the quality of life is all about.”

Fred Daneker, of the U.S. Forest Service, said of the new book: “It’s a beautiful piece of work and is badly needed. We’re very excited about it.”

Daneker, who oversees urban and community forestry programs and co-wrote an urban forestry text, welcomes the combination of personal values and nuts-and-bolts information in “The Simple Act,” particularly in view of President Bush’s proposal for a massive urban tree-planting program.

“We have a lot of books that deal with trees in cities and how to take care of them,” he said. “But I don’t know of any reference that tells how to organize yourself as a community that wants a better environment and then take hold and get the job done.”