Serving Los Angeles since 1991
Bringing Nature Back
We grow cooler streets, green careers,
and healthier communities.
ABOUT US
North East Trees is a community-rooted environmental organization advancing equity, urban health, and climate resilience across Los Angeles through thoughtful, nature-based solutions.
For more than 30 years, we have partnered with residents to transform neighborhoods by restoring habitat, expanding green space, and strengthening biodiversity and wildfire resilience.​
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Our work goes beyond environmental restoration. We invest in people, creating paid pathways into environmental careers and cultivating the next generation of environmental leaders. From hillsides and watersheds to schoolyards and community spaces, every project is built in partnership and designed to endure.
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At the heart of our mission is a simple belief: when we restore landscapes, we also restore opportunity, health, and hope.
WHAT WE DO
North East Trees designs, builds, and stewards living landscapes that strengthen communities and ecosystems across Los Angeles. Working hand-in-hand with residents, we create greener, healthier neighborhoods where both people and nature can thrive.
Greening Housing Developments
Workforce Development
Schoolyard Greening
Open Space Stewardship
Native Plant Nursery
Urban Forestry
We bring nature back to some of Los Angeles’ most densely built and historically overlooked public housing communities, places shaped by concrete, heat, and heavy infrastructure, often alongside polluting freeways and industrial corridors. We design and build living landscapes that offer something essential: relief, respite, connection, and possibility, transforming underutilized spaces into shaded, walkable environments with walking paths, exercise equipment, and welcoming areas for gathering and daily use. Beyond beauty, our work delivers lasting impact. By integrating trees, native plants, rain gardens, and bioswales, we capture and filter stormwater, reduce flooding, and restore ecological function, creating cooler, healthier, more resilient neighborhoods built to thrive.
Our workforce development program builds a homegrown workforce rooted in the communities we serve. We train young adults across Los Angeles, equipping them with hands-on experience, industry certifications, and skills in urban forestry, arboriculture, masonry, welding, and landscape construction, working alongside our professional crews. This is paid, real-world training that transforms both people and place. Participants help build and care for the landscapes their communities rely on while gaining clear pathways into long-term careers, expanding opportunity and strengthening neighborhoods from within.
We transform schoolyards from heat-trapping asphalt into living landscapes where students can learn, play, and thrive. We replace concrete with shade trees, native gardens, and natural play spaces, creating outdoor environments that spark curiosity, support hands-on learning, and bring nature into daily life. These spaces cool campuses, improve air quality, and provide safe, welcoming places for exploration and growth, shaping healthier, more resilient communities and the next generation who will care for them.
Our Open Space Stewardship goes beyond caring for land, it restores, protects, and strengthens Los Angeles’ natural spaces to withstand a changing climate. Across hundreds of acres, our teams remove invasive species, restore native habitats, stabilize hillsides, and build fire resilience. In places like Flat Top Park, land we intentionally acquired and steward to remain protected open space, this work is critical, reducing flammable vegetation and reestablishing fire-adapted native species to help lower wildfire risk. At the same time, our stewardship strengthens ecosystem health, supporting biodiversity, improving soil stability, and reinforcing the natural systems communities rely on. Maintained trails and restored landscapes create safe, accessible spaces for people to reconnect with nature, ensuring these places endure for generations.
Our Native Plant Nursery is where restoration begins. We grow thousands of hyperlocal, climate-resilient native plants each year, carefully propagated to thrive in Los Angeles’ unique conditions. These plants form the foundation of our work, restoring habitats, strengthening fire resilience, and bringing nature back to communities across the city. Every plant is grown with purpose, supporting both our projects and workforce programs, building skills, creating pathways into environmental careers, and ensuring lasting impact.
Our Urban Forestry team is building a cooler, healthier, more resilient Los Angeles, one tree at a time. In neighborhoods where canopy has long been scarce, we plant, care for, and protect thousands of trees each year, bringing shade, relief, and life back to streets that need it most. While Los Angeles averages about 21% tree canopy, many communities we serve, like South LA, Watts, and Boyle Heights—have as little as 5–7% coverage. This is more than planting, it’s long-term stewardship. From watering and pruning to monitoring tree health, we ensure every tree thrives. The impact is immediate and lasting: cooler streets, cleaner air, reduced runoff, and greener neighborhoods, powered by certified arborists and local crews trained through our workforce programs.
WHY OUR WORK MATTERS
Too many Los Angeles neighborhoods face extreme heat, poor air quality, wildfire risk, and limited access to green space. These challenges affect not only the environment, but also public health, economic opportunity, and quality of life.
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North East Trees exists to change all that.
We believe access to nature is essential. Trees cool neighborhoods, clean the air, restore ecosystems, and create spaces where communities can gather and thrive. By bringing nature-based solutions to the neighborhoods that need them most, we help build healthier, safer, and more climate resilient communities.
Just as importantly, we invest in people. Through hands-on training and paid workforce opportunities, we open doors to meaningful careers and empower local residents to help shape the future of their own neighborhoods.
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The result is lasting change:
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Healthier communities
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Restored ecosystems and biodiversity
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Reduced climate and wildfire risk
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Expanded access to green space
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Career pathways and economic opportunity
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Together, we are helping create a greener, healthier, and more resilient Los Angeles, for today and for generations to come.
PARTNERS & SPONSORS
