Summer is just around the corner, and in Sacramento, that means an inevitable endless quest for shade begins. For the Sacramento Tree Foundation, it’s more of a mission than a quest.
Since 1990, the group, in partnership with SMUD, has offered up to 10 free shade trees to all SMUD customers. The program doles out more than 13,000 trees in 5-gallon buckets to residents every year, according to Stephanie Robinson, interim director of programs at the Tree Foundation.
“Once summertime hits and that heat just sets in and you feel it radiating off the asphalt and everything, people really reach out a lot more to get shade trees,” Robinson said, standing in a row of tree saplings in the foundation’s nursery. “You can feel the difference. Even now in the nursery with the tiny trees, you can feel the difference between the shade and the sun.”…