In 2023, Cal Fire dedicated significant funds to schoolyard greening projects in California. This landmark initiative has the opportunity to greatly improve student health and overall quality of life for students in California schools.

Unfortunately, many tree plantings in California fail ten years after planting. If we are going to create long-term benefits for California’s children, we need to select the trees with the highest likelihood of survival. Species selection is the number one contributor to the long-term success of an urban tree. If the wrong species are planted, they will either not survive or come into conflict with human needs and desires and be removed.

In collaboration with CAL FIRE, Green Schoolyards America, and other partners, we developed a list of trees appropriate for schoolyard settings based on the following criteria: non-toxic, no sharp spines or plant parts, low maintenance, strong branch structure, provides good shade, not invasive, has high educational value, and is suitable for the climate region.

We also added this data to an existing and widely-used web-based tree selection guide, SelecTree, to provide this information to schools, districts, and other stakeholders. Users can query schoolyard trees appropriate to their area and overlay those results with any other species attributes their project requires, such as tree height, foliage type, etc. Additionally, users can make and share tree lists that they create. In this way, decision-makers have regionally specific science-based information upon which to make their tree selections, ensuring that California’s schoolchildren receive all the benefits of a green schoolyard.