Earth Day Event Brings Forest To Tacoma Mall

This Earth Day, you don’t have to go any further than the Tacoma mall to find yourself in a forest. Well, kind of a forest. The installation is part of Tacoma’s GRIT Project with the City of Tacoma.

Tacoma’s Ryan Hebert explains the forest:

“When you walk in and look on either side, it should look like you’re in a much larger forested area and it’s just an opportunity to talk to people about about trees and how trees make them feel”

The GRIT project is a partnership between the City of Tacoma, Tacoma Tree Foundation, The Nature Conservancy of Washington and the University of Washington, to improve urban tree canopy in the Tacoma Mall Neighborhood.

The area has about 9% tree canopy cover in comparison to Tacoma’s 20% average, according to Hebert.

The project will also conduct research to understand the impacts of greenery for communities.

“The big picture project is understanding this issue of density and how we can add green space to a neighborhood at the same time as housing is being added,” says Lowell Wyse of Tacoma Tree Foundation. 

The city will be adding over 300 trees to the neighborhood through other capital projects, Wyse says, and scientists working on GRIT will study the impacts of this.