By Heather Matthews
Staff Writer

A young volunteer, above, helps out at the Cedar Street Family Park, a space formerly occupied by a crack house. At right, a portion of Pine Street is shown before, during and after construction of its community gardens. (Courtesy Photos)

Often trees and green space are overlooked and taken for granted in a growing city like Manchester. Trees, shrubs and flowers are seen as dispensable, unnecessary or simply in the way, and are cut down and demolished in favor of growing businesses, housing units and sidewalks.

However, the green space of Manchester, not the concrete sidewalks, connects the city’s residents and creates a stronger, safer community, said Mary Tebo, a community forestry educator for the University of New Hampshire’s Cooperative Extension.

Tebo helps people understand the benefits of the green spaces throughout the city, teaching them to appreciate their own backyards, downtown streets, neighborhood parks and even cemeteries. She also works to revitalize these green spaces through several volunteer efforts and UNH Cooperative Extension-sponsored programs.

“These street trees, landscapes, community gardens and pocket parks can change people’s lives,” she said.

According to Tebo, a community’s natural resources can reduce crime, increase property value, save energy, improve air quality and improve health by reducing stress, lowering blood pressure and speeding up the healing process.

Revitalization work is an ongoing process, with most efforts focused on the center of the city, downtown and the Millyard, Tebo said. In the late 1990s, the New Hampshire Community Tree Steward Volunteer Program took an inventory of Manchester’s trees. It became evident to the group, which works to convert vacant lots into community parks and gardens, that the city was in desperate need of some new trees and green spaces.

“It really showed that the downtown and center-city areas need the most help as far as green spaces go,” she said. “And a lot of the work we do is still based on that survey.”

In the 64 blocks surveyed by the stewards, 880 vacant planting sites were found, an average of 14 vacant planting sites per block. They also discovered that more than half of the trees in Manchester’s business district and city center would not be able to survive for more than 10 years in their current state of health.

“We want to have those who live (in the city) take the training and go into their neighborhoods and take care of them,” Tebo said. “The more ownership there is, the more things survive and the more people appreciate them and take care of them.”

When one person in a neighborhood begins to show ownership and pride for their home area, several more follow, she said. Tebo witnessed this while helping the Pine Street community transform the old foundation of a dilapidated garage into a “keystone” of the center-city area.

“Once it started looking better, once people started raking and working, it increased exponentially,” she said. “Someone explained it like this: ‘If someone throws a bag of trash in an area, everyone will throw their trash there.’ It works the opposite way, too. Care and pride for the neighborhood also spreads.”

Eleven years ago, Tracy Degges, along with Tebo and Manchester Neighborhood Housing Services, helped her Cedar Street neighbors show pride and ownership in their neighborhood by planting five trees between Pine and Union streets.

“They believed in their neighborhood, and they wanted to take it back,” Degges said. “The area was substandard and even deplorable. We needed to rehab it. Now when you look down my street, it looks like little town U.S.A.”

Degges is the chairman of Manchester Weed and Seed, a revitalization initiative through the United States Department of Justice. The program works to “weed” out violent crime by planting ­ or “seeding” ­ hope, by providing programs and services to strengthen neighborhoods. She said with the addition of just a few trees and a community park, the pride in the neighborhood increased dramatically.

“It really meant something to people,” she said. “Yes, we still have our crime, but people plant flowers now, they cut their grass, they take pride in their neighborhood.”

Degges and Tebo also saw a vacant lot on Cedar Street, once the site of a crack house, transformed by the community into a beautiful family park. As a result, there was a newfound comfort and pride for the Cedar Street neighborhood. Tebo said the Manchester Police Department reported the number of calls in the Cedar Street area dropped from more than 800 to 64 in just one year.

The new healthy, prospering trees and flowering park symbolize more than just a reclaiming of their neighborhood and a safer place to live, Degges said.

“Those trees were the hope, dreams and future of the people,” she said. “They planted those trees with the ideal that they were good enough for a safe neighborhood and that they could believe in themselves. When you look down our street now, that is the American dream. People never thought that they could get the house with the white picket fence. But now they look at our street and say, ‘Gosh, maybe I can dream. Maybe I can get the house.’”

None of the revitalization efforts or community changes could be done without partnerships with the city of Manchester, groups such as Intown Manchester and the Manchester Neighborhood Housing Services, and the Queen City’s residents, Tebo said. To become involved with the Community Tree Steward Program, or to learn more, call the 629-9494, Ext. 140, or visit www.extension.unh.edu.

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