Can we have more trees?? (Denver, Colorado Springs: established neighborhood, college, gated)

[sgmm]

We live in Castle Rock. Everything is fine - expect that I want to see more trees.... We lived in Oregon, Washington, California and Arizona before. Except for AZ (which may be comparable to CO), I feel the rest states have a lot more trees than CO.

I would like to see more trees in the center of streets, on the sides of the streets, up on the mountains and EVERYWHERE. I wonder why we dont have enough trees on the streets in Colorado. I dont know how we could see more trees here...

Trees, trees, I love trees... How could we have more treessssss

I travel a lot due to work. Everytime coming back from Denver airport (DIA), I wonder why we see such big open piece of bare land with no trees... I visit different states and different countries. I always love places where it has a lot of trees. That's one thing I don't see in Denver metro and Castle Rock...

[2bindenver]

It is difficult to keep trees in a arid climate. There are older/bigger trees in older established neighborhoods...

Western Colorado, Central Colorado (mountains, lots of forests) and then the Estern part of the great midwest plains.

Most of suburban Denver has been built since 1980 and developers cleared the land of the native scrub oak to plant more suburban friendly trees.

The short answer is of course - we live in desert like climate, and trees need water.

[Nea1]

Denver has more trees than PHX thats for sure!!!!!!

[newportbeachsmostwanted]

Golden and the area west(Genesee) has lots of mature trees.

[Mike from back east]

You should see the tree-lined and canopied streets in the old north end of Colorado Springs near Colorado College, and most of the old center city. And it is affordable by most coastal standards. You're a 30-40 minute drive from here, come on down sometime and check it out...take in a show at Pikes Peak Center, eat at one of the ton of nice places on S. Tejon St, so much more to do....

s/mike

[tfox]

We have lots of trees in Denver, but of course they were mostly planted by humans decades ago.

[McGowdog]

Like Katella Ave in front of Disneyland and the Vegas Strip? They are both streets lined with wonderful Palm trees and they are as plastic as Joan River's face.

Go out to Eastern Colorado. You'll see irrigated farming along the Arkansas River. And guess what? Trees. North of there, you'll see dry land farming. Here and there, you'll see trees lining active and not-so-active creeks.

There's two types of trees, from what you're describing; ones that Man plants and ones that God plants. Ones that God plants don't seem to need as much maintenance.

I kind of miss Eucapyptus trees myself. Once we go down to places with an altitude below 1000 ft, like Kansas City, I really start to notice a wider selection of trees, bushes, grasses, etc.

This one person from Georgia showed me a whole bunch of foilage that Colorado has that you don't see back East, so I guess it's all relative. I also know an Native American Medicine Man who can just find anything that ails you out in the field; sage, sweet grass, this stuff that fixes a tooth ache, etc.

After a harsh winter I like to watch Colorado's landscape wake up and turn green and see the trees bud. Things are green for a while. Then the summer comes and takes a lot of it away, depending on the weather and amount of spring rain. It's always different. But you ain't gonna make Colorado look like the San Joaquin Valley.

[tfox]

Agree about the trees man plans versus those God plants. In Castle Rock there were many trees -- too bad the developer who built the subdivision ripped them all out and put concrete, asphalt, and kentucky bluegrass in their place. It's not just Castle Rock -- it's the same story up and down the front range from top to bottom.

There's a really stunning lack of respect for our natural environment -- despite the fact that we're arguably one of the most beautiful states in the country, too many people seem to want to compulsively want to change our natural environment to something else. This is particularly true with the high plains -- few of us have ever seen how beautiful the the virgin prairie is in the springtime because most of it's been plowed up and swept bare by the wind. There are a few restoration projects going on in spots, but it's a lot longer and a lot harder to restore a prairie habitat than a forest, and fewer people know or care about it anyway.

[COflower]

Being the high plains (from the eastern portions of the mountains on east) and an arid climate, trees are not native to the area.

If you can, pull up some photos of late 1800s before the cities here took root (no pun intended) the area was virtually treeless except where the rivers converged.

Most of the trees you see in various parts of the Front Range were planted by those who've migrated here since. There are higher parts in the Front Range (Black Forest and the Monument area for example) where the elevation is high enough the pine trees are native to the area. But the high plains are mostly known for the grasses, yucca plants and other drought resistant/native plants.

[tfox]

Originally Posted by COflower

If you can, pull up some photos of late 1800s before the cities here took root (no pun intended) the area was virtually treeless except where the rivers converged.

You misunderstand me. I wasn't saying the high plains had trees. They WERE beautiful even without trees (except riparian ones). I was saying that their native flora was incredibly beautiful before we busted the sod and the top 5 feet of topsoil blew away. It's hard to find native prairie anywhere except for in a few protected natural grassland.