Health & Fitness
Greening Our Central Business District (CBD)
Greening our urban center should be an important part of our Wheaton redevelopment efforts.
A major part of greening any community in the county will be ensuring that there is a lot of tree canopy in that community. Trees are important to the health and well-being of our communities. There is a direct relationship between tree canopy and water and air quality.
In Montgomery County about 50 percent of the land is covered by tree canopy, which is pretty good. In the lower part of the County, the tree canopy levels are a lot lower. Montgomery Hills, which is between Wheaton and Silver Spring, has a lowly 8 percent canopy coverage, the poorest in the county.
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On Saturday, Boy Scout Pack 759, University of Maryland students, and Conservation Montgomery took part in a tree planting at the Seminary Place Shopping Center parking lot on Georgia Avenue in Montgomery Hills. They planted several Sugar and Red maple trees.
The new trees will not only beautify the Shopping Center, they will also reduce stormwater runoff going into Sligo Creek, filter and cool the air, and cool down the parking lot.
Find out what's happening in Wheatonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The County’s Planning Department, which helped coordinate the Seminary Shopping Center tree planting project, is using new data on tree canopy coverage in the county to identify urban areas that could benefit from new trees. Downtown Silver Spring, which also has a low percentage of tree canopy (about 14 percent), will be a pilot area for new urban tree planting programs.
In the Wheaton CBD, we need more native trees. According to the Montgomery County Planning Department, the Wheaton CBD has only a 19 percent tree canopy.
GreenWheaton believes that more native trees will help create a more economically and environmentally sustainable Wheaton urban district. The lack of trees in Wheaton’s urban district makes it a lot hotter in the summer and less appealing for walking, shopping or dining.
GreenWheaton, therefore, is encouraging that any Wheaton Redevelopment effort include adding trees to help reduce the heat island effect and to add visual appeal to our shopping district.
