Supply shortage makes tree planting a tough nut to crack

All across the Chesapeake Bay watershed, communities are working to meet ambitious tree planting goals made possible by historic amounts of state and federal funding.

Whether planted on city streets, farms or along a river, trees keep the water clean by absorbing polluted runoff and trapping sediment. They provide habitat for animals such as bald eagles and osprey and make the water cooler, which benefits species like trout, herring and sturgeon. On a hot summer day, trees can make city streets cooler by as much as five degrees and improve air quality in industrialized areas.

But while jurisdictions might be “all in” on the benefit of trees, in many places there is a lack of high quality, diverse and native tree species needed to meet the demand.

Meeting the demand for more trees

When nonprofits, local governments, businesses or homeowners want to plant trees, they get them from state and private nurseries. But tree planters have reported a dearth of trees ready to be planted, particularly diverse, hardwood species and ones that can tolerate city streets.

Jake Good, nursery manager at the state-run Augusta Nursery in Crimora, Virginia, estimates that in the eastern U.S. the demand for hardwood tree seedlings is somewhere around 300 million trees per year, and nurseries across the region are only able to produce between 30-40 million per year. Seedlings are young trees, typically around a year old, that have a higher survival rate than seeds but are much more affordable to plant on a large scale than more mature trees.

According to Good, the Augusta Nursery, which is one of two state nurseries in Virginia, has recognized the supply demand and has expanded operations in the past few years to produce not only more hardwood seedlings, but a wider variety of hardwood species. Included in their efforts is a program where volunteers can collect acorns and seeds in their community and bring them to the nursery. This year alone the seed collection drive has brought in close to 15,000 pounds of seeds which will yield an estimated 155,000 seedlings.

“The volunteer seed collection has been phenomenal the past few years and seems to get better and better with time,” Good said.

In Maryland, the Ayton State Tree Nursery is also ramping up tree production to meet the demands of the state’s 5 Million Trees Initiative, which launched in 2021 and aims to plant five millions trees by 2031. Richard Garrett, nursery manager at the Ayton State Tree Nursery, said that while the nursery has been increasing production, 2024 was a particularly tough year for seed collection. The nursery uses staff and volunteers to collect seeds and acorns, but there were far fewer seeds around this year than in 2023.

“The acorn crop this year was miserable,” Garett said. “But last year they were everywhere.”

According to Garett, the lack of available acorns and seeds to collect could be due to a number of environmental factors, such as cold snaps, droughts and heavy rainfall, keeping trees from producing seeds.

In addition to state nurseries, funders and nonprofits are also working to grow a wider range of tree species, especially those acclimated to cities. In Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay Trust was tasked with providing grants to organizations to plant 500,000 trees in underserved urban areas as part of the 5 Million Trees Initiative. However, when setting up their grant program for this effort, the nonprofit discovered a scarcity of diverse, native trees that work for cities.

In both forest and city streets, tree diversity is important because there are diseases and pests such as the emerald ash borer that target specific species. When an area is dominated by a particular type of species, there’s a risk of a disease or pest coming around and wiping out a majority of the trees. Trees planted in cities also need to be able to withstand more intense summer heat waves and less fertile soil than they would in more rural areas.

“A diverse native tree canopy has important ecological and economic benefits for cities,” said Lianna Gomori-Ruben, urban trees senior program officer with the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

To increase the supply of diverse native trees, the Trust has partnered with four nurseries to grow from a list of 42 tree species that are acclimated to urban areas. By 2026, the Trust expects to have 9,180 tree seedlings ready to be planted from this project.

In some parts of the watershed, nonprofits who do a lot of tree planting are standing up their own nurseries to ensure supply for the coming years. In March, 2024, the Baltimore Tree Trust announced that it will open a nursery in Park Heights, using grant funding from the NHP Foundation. Abel Olivo, founder of Defensores de la Cuenca, has also said that his organization plans on opening up a nursery in the future.

Since these organizations work closely with homeowners, businesses, churches and school systems in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., they are familiar with the kinds of trees that communities want to plant and therefore know what to grow.

Where tree planting goes from here

In 2024, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Forestry Workgroup brought together environmental professionals from a number of state and federal agencies for a virtual forum to discuss tree supply challenges in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

During the forum, speakers pointed toward the challenge of establishing consistent funding for tree growing, planting and maintenance. Fluctuations in funding can cause a shortage in trees, as we’re seeing now, or an over-supply of trees without enough trained experts available to plant and maintain them.

“The funding for urban forestry projects goes through booms and busts, and that makes it really difficult for urban foresters and tree buyers to give nurseries the security that those businesses need,” said Jehane Samaha, a national urban nursery specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, during a forum presentation.

Samaha works for a program within the Forest Service known as Reforestation, Nurseries, and Genetic Resources (RNGR), which maintains a network of tree growers and planters. During a presentation, Samaha advocated for improved communications between funders, planters and growers to sync up their timelines as much as possible. She also highlighted new potential funding streams, such as proposed revisions to the Farm Bill that would include more staff to support reforestation and nurseries, increased technical assistance and workforce training, and $25 million in grants for state, tribal and private nurseries.

Funding such as this would be a boon to forestry efforts and reduce the risk of tree shortages in the future. But as we’ve seen in the past consistent funding is never a given. And it’s not just tree supply that needs to be sustained, but trained contractors, grants for planting and interest among landowners.

Reforestation has already saved many of the Chesapeake’s waterways, but maintaining progress is a tough nut to crack.