Maybe not Fairmount Park, but getting there.
In spring 2007, the trio became Philly Tree People, one of 135 neighborhood groups that have planted more than 20,000 trees in Philadelphia and the four suburban counties surrounding it in the last four years.
"I really feel strongly," Perez says, "that our neighborhood could be much more inviting, friendly and warm, maybe even healthier and safer, with more trees."
Sort of like . . . Fairmount Park.
Philly Tree People are all Tree Tenders, volunteers trained to choose the right trees for the right place and then plant and care for them. They're working with TreeVitalize, a state program dedicated to replacing the tree canopy lost to development, age, disease and negligence in hard-hit Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Mindy Maslin, manager of Tree Tenders for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, explains the canopy idea: "If you're standing on the street looking up, you're looking at what percentage of overall sky is blocked out by trees."
The bigger the percentage, the cooler we'll be in summer, the more storm water will be absorbed into the ground, and the nicer our neighborhoods will be.
And that's what gets Perez, Richman and Blank going - the idea that trees can raise up a neighborhood while doing good things for the local and larger environment.
Wow, are trees the answer to everything? "They make me happy," says Perez.
Not a bad start.
TreeVitalize launched in 2004, after a U.S. Forest Service study showed that the Philadelphia region had lost 8 percent of its tree cover - 34,000 acres of trees - in just 15 years.
The horticultural society got the effort off the ground in the Philadelphia area, taking it to Pittsburgh last spring. Now, it's going statewide, with a goal of one million new trees in Pennsylvania by 2012.
