ChattMag Conversations

Preston Roberts is the coordinator of Chattanooga’s Take Root program. He just received his ISA arborist certification in February.

Q: What is ISA certification?

A: ISA is the International Society of Arboriculture, and arboriculture is just the care and maintenance of trees. It’s an internationally recognized standard of tree care and maintenance, and a certified arborist is a benchmark for that field.
It includes not just qualifications for tree care, pruning,tree planting, and tree removal, but it’s also a competency in risk assessmentof trees and overall health assessment.

As pertaining to an urban forest, that’s a lot more important, especially with risk assessment. If you have a tree out by the street, you need to know if it’s going to fall in a high wind or storm. A certified arborist would be more qualified to make that call.

Q: What are the requirements for that certification?

A: You have to have either three years of experience in the field of arboriculture or two years of an equivalent education, and then you have to pass an exam.

Q: Tell me about the Take Root program.

A: Take Root is a tree planting initiative with a goal to initially plant 1,500 trees in the downtown area and the expanded central business district. We are a nonprofit that works in partnership with the city,so we raise all our own money through grants, partnerships with businesses and individual donations. We partner with the city and the city gives us the right to plant trees.

All our trees are street trees, meaning we plant them in that strip between the sidewalk and the curb. We’ve got 600 trees planted, and we’re wrapping up the tree-planting season, which is from November to March.Then we’ll have to maintain them, keep water on the trees and make sure they’re healthy and established, and we’ll start another cycle in November.

Q: How is this certification going to help Take Root?

A: I think it gives credibility to the work we’re doing. It shows that we’ve got some integrity in our work, that we’ve got a plan thought out, and we have the expertise to carry it through.

Q: So what’s next for you and for the program?

A: Right now, the first priority is to keep the 600 trees watered the first season, through the summertime. Next is funding. We are working toward building a lot more partnerships and getting more donors from all different avenues, from foundations and businesses to individuals.

We’re getting our website rebuilt, and it will be the go-to site for all our information and online donations. My hope is that it will promote us and get the word out.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about the program?

A: A few weeks ago, we did a volunteer planting in the Southside neighborhood. It was a lot of fun and a success. Our hope also is to develop more volunteer work for the program. It not only saves us money and planting costs but it’s a great community builder. It gets people together and gets them to take ownership in the work we do. It’s definitely worth pursuing.

 Read more about the Take Root program in the March/April issue of Chattanooga Magazine.