The greening of North Philadelphia.

Shovel power, good ideas, and personal energy are bringing pride back to these tough neighborhoods.

Neighbors recognize the blue pickup when it rolls through North Philadelphia. Some residents of what is one of Pennsylvania's most impoverished areas call out "Susan" or "tree lady" when it passes. The driver, Susan Phillips, has become so familiar in what narcotic police have dubbed Philadelphia's "badlands" that even drug pushers leave her alone.

Although Susan Phillips lives in a nearby neighborhood with her husband and child, she knows these streets as well as any resident. She's North Philadelphia's connection to Philadelphia Green, a treeplanting group whose mission is to green the City of Brotherly Love. Before she was hired in 1989 as the group's street-tree coordinator, her only experience with horticulture was pressing leaves when she was a child. Phillips, 40, and her "shovel division," a five-member, four-truck, one-Bobcat crew, have been planting trees for the past three years, and she says proudly that the neighborhoods are looking better every day.

Part of that outlook, she admits, is due to an increasing familiarity with the decrepit sights of that part of the city, but North Philadelphia's 14.3 square miles really are getting nicer, and greener. Phillips can recognize almost every new tree there as one that Philadelphia Green planted.

Philadelphia Green, part of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, started in 1978 with a staff of two; now it's up to 38 employees, has sponsored more than 2,000 greening programs in Philadelphia's gardens and along its streets, and was responsible for planting more than 925 trees in 1992. A $1.1- million grant in 1989 from the William Penn Foundation enabled Philadelphia Green to go full-force in North Philadelphia.

When Philadelphia Green hired Phillips, it gave her a daunting task: Encourage tree plantings in neighborhoods where vacant lots are used as dumpsters and demolished houses are commonplace. Phillips and a Spanish-speaking co-worker handed out pamphlets to passers-by, picking hot days when people were sitting on their stoops. She went door-to-door, asking people if they wanted to help plant a tree in their neighborhood. She visited local church groups and PTA meetings and sneaked into private townwatch gatherings, tactics she still uses to reach potential tree lovers. "Any time there were five or more people somewhere, I was there," she says. Today Philadelphia Green's waiting list for trees numbers several hundred applications.

Despite the continuous flow of treeplanting requests, Phillips wanted more contact with the Hispanic communities. But as a white woman from another neighborhood, the "tree lady" was an outsider. A U.S. Forest Service grant, aimed at helping minorities, gave Philadelphia Green the money to hire Jose Garcia, a former construction worker. Phillips says people find the young Spanish-speaking native of North Philadelphia to be more approachable; Garcia jokes, "Maybe it's my earring." With his help, Philadelphia Green has been able to reach clear across North Philadelphia.

The first major planting in North Philadelphia took place during the spring of 1990 on Seventh Street, a well-traveled bus route. That site was chosen for the inaugural eight trees--callery pears and hedge maples--at the request of resident Carmen Delgado, who contacted Philadelphia Green about getting trees for a lot across from her home. After completing the Seventh Street planting, the Shovel Division began digging tree plots in Delgado's once-trashed lot.

Delgado lives on the periphery of the west and east sides of North Philadelphia, a belligerent border between the black and Hispanic communities. Here, says Philadelphia Green's Patricia Schrieder, trees are the "glue" that bonds different ethnic groups together. Phillips adds, "On some blocks that are half black and half Hispanic, where neighbors seldom speak to each other, the tree program has given them a topic that's not controversial." Residents now call on Philadelphia Green to help them make their property look like Delgado's, a brilliant collage of trees, vegetables, and roses.

Delgado, who was born in Puerto Rico, is a small woman with a big smile that reflects her spirited energy. Nothing seems to deter her from greening her piece of North Philadelphia. When she wanted a fence for her yard, she built her own out of old fences and other scraps, including a screen door. When she didn't have a shovel to use in her garden, she made do with a kitchen knife. And when a vandal stole her arborvitae tree, she gave chase in her bathrobe.

Vandalism typically hits the inner-city hard, and the same is true for street trees. People rest garbage bags on the trunks, throw trash in the tree beds, or simply pull saplings out of the ground, either to sell them or just for the sake of doing it, Phillips says. But Philadelphia Green has the community on its side: "(Vandals and criminals) get nervous when people start caring about their neighborhoods," Phillips says. Of the 543 trees planted in 1991, only eight street trees and 12 lot trees have died. "Some died from stress. The others," Phillips says matter-of-factly, "are from problems like the delivery trucks running over them."

Philadelphia Green will replace any of its trees that die, whether it be from disease or vandalism. The best method for keeping a tree alive in a city is to plant it where it will be cared for, so Phillips talks to neighbors about what they want: a garden with trees, street-tree beds, or a playground for kids. Philadelphia Green surveys neighborhoods to find out how residents feel about trees. This helps determine both who gets a tree and who doesn't want one in front of his or her house. She and Garcia then train citizens to care for the trees, leave tools with a designated block captain, and return in one year to teach pruning.

Not only does Philadelphia Green train people in tree care, it trains them to train their neighbors, and children have been among the best pupils. The most successful educational tool so far has been a game called Environmental Jeopardy, which teaches children how to care about trees. The tree education program goes to about 40 area schools, many of which have their own gardens and tree farms as a result of Philadelphia Green. The trees from the farms are planted throughout the neighborhood. In turn, neighbors watch over the school gardens during the summer break.

The program, funded by the William Penn grant, gives children the incentive to care for trees and in some cases encourages their own block plantings. "Children are scared at first," Garcia says, explaining that to city kids trees are foreign. "But I just have to hand them the shovel and let them get their hands dirty."

Perhaps the most arduous job for residents who want a tree garden is clearing the lots, and that task sometimes seems almost inconceivable, even to Phillips. "Some trash was piled more than two stories high," she recalls.

The layers of trash in North Philadelphia lots start with houses, collapsed down into their basements. Garbage is added daily, old syringes, car parts, furniture, and just plain trash. At one site the Philadelphia Green crew dug for about eight hours just to plant one tree. Bottles from the 1800s and an entire fire hydrant have been found in street-tree beds.

The practice of dumping garbage on vacant lots became typical in Philadelphia several years ago. The city's landfills hit their maximum, a proposed and needed trash-to-steam plant was not built, and old trash sites became environmentally unsound. In the end, disposing of trash became, and remains, expensive, says Philadelphia Green's site-development manager Michael Groman. For the most part, he adds, people from around the city dumped trash in North Philadelphia because they thought nobody cared. The Department of License and Inspection stepped in three years ago with the goal of clearing 1,000 lots and contracted with Philadelphia Green to plant on 100 of them.

"We could be planting trees for a long time," says Blaine Bonham Jr., executive director of Philadelphia Green. When Philadelphia was built at the turn of the century, it was a city of about three million people. The population has dropped to only 1.6 million, opening up space for growing trees.

Local nurseries provide most of Philadelphia Green's trees, but some come from nurseries in Delaware and New Jersey. The Fairmount Park Commission, the city's tree-planting arm named after a city park, provides compost, mulching, and wood chips for planting projects. Budget cuts have stunted Fairmount Park's tree-planting projects in the city, currently limiting them to specific projects funded by private donations, says park ranger Walt Stankus.

Despite the gloom of reality--for every tree planted in this city, seven die--North Philadelphia has its fair share of color: Bright murals are painted on many buildings that flank greened areas. The Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network offers the technical skill, but the images come from the residents. Neighbors meet with the group to decide what will be painted, because they watchdog the murals once the work is done, explains James Garland, the group's deputy executive director. The Network, which has painted some 25 murals in North Philadelphia, has teamed up with Philadelphia Green, painting a mural and adding a fence where a garden has been started. Philadelphia Green, in turn, promotes trees and gardens where the Anti-Graffiti Network has put fences and murals.

And while North Philadelphia is looking greener, Phillips is quick to remind residents that the planting is just the first step. Without the residents' support, plans can sometimes fall through. An empty lot near Lenora Richbow's house was planned as a playground with trees but now has more brown than green and looks much the way it did before.

"When are we going to get the rest of the trees in?" Richbow asks Phillips, but Phillips corrects the "we" with "you." The tree program, Phillips tells her, is not a charity: Philadelphia Green provides assistance to get residents started, but expects the community to keep things green. Speaking from experience, Phillips concludes, "(Richbow) will give up eventually, and someone else in the neighborhood will take over."

Projects like Richbow's don't seem to dampen Philadelphia Green's enthusiasm: "If everything works, then you're not trying hard enough," says director Bonham.

For example, Daisy Singletary's Newkirk Street garden, immortalized in one of the Anti-Graffiti Network's murals, is a three-time winner of Philadelphia's Community Flower Garden Contest. But she was instrumental in having Norway maples removed from her block. "They were just too big," she says, scanning the 16-foot-wide street.

"Call me, and I'll bring over small trees to plant along the street," Phillips offers.

"Some people love trees. Some people hate trees," explains site-development manager Groman. "People worry that kids will eat their berries, trees are messy, and they create shadows for others to hide in."

That's where Phillips, the former tree novice, puts her street smarts to work. "The thing I'm trying to do is plant the right tree in the right place," she says.

And it does seem to be working. One greened block, she says, quickly grows into five or six greened blocks. News about Philadelphia Green travels by word-of-neighbor's-mouth, and the requests for plantings exceed the capacity of a small staff that also works citywide on other greening programs. Phillips, Garcia, and the local residents do most of the North Philadelphia tree work or any project that calls for the Shovel Division.

In the inner city, trees and people seem to co-exist; each nurtures the other. As Phillips drives from block to block, passing fenced gardens, well-attended trees, and murals of people in nature, she sees that the relationship is strong. North Philadelphia is looking a lot nicer these days.

Tricia Taylor is an assistant editor for American Forests.