Meet Libby Shaw

Q: Libby, how long have you lived in Watertown, and what brought you here?

I've lived in Watertown since 1978.  I moved here to share an apartment with some friends. I remember being  so impressed by the big trees that dappled our street with shade.  Such a change from the dusty, treeless neighborhood where I was living in Somerville!

Q: What do you do for a living?

The focus of my career at MIT (since 1980) has been the operation, teaching, and management of analytical instruments that explore the top few nanometers of material surfaces. Sounds wonky, but what's going on at the surface of metals, ceramics, semiconductors and plastics is very important to making materials work effectively.

Q: You lead Trees for Watertown, a local group of residents who advocate for trees. How did it get started?  

Trees for Watertown (TFW) was founded in 1985 by a group of residents, primarily young families, who were alarmed by the City of Watertown's casual destruction of mature neighborhood tree canopy.  Back then, there was very little understanding among officials of the immensely important benefits that urban shade trees provide. So TFW fought to protect existing street trees from premature take-down and from damage by road work, and lobbied the city to hire a professional Tree Warden, which finally happened in 1996.     

TFW organized many tree plantings in neighborhoods, in schools, at our libraries (Watertown used to have three libraries) and in playgrounds. For an example close to home for those of us in the East End, almost all the lovely big trees in Sullivan Playground at the corner of Arlington and Mount Auburn Streets were planted by TFW.  

I didn't know about TFW until about 1992, when I woke up one morning to the sound of a DPW worker smashing the roots of a beautiful big maple on our street with a sledge hammer, in order to level the sidewalk. That galvanized me to find people as concerned about this kind of damage as I was.

After Watertown hired its first Tree Warden (Tom Brady, who is now back in Watertown as its new DPW Director!) TFW shifted its focus more to educating the public about the importance of the urban forest and collaborating with the City and with community organizations to protect and grow Watertown's urban forest.  

Q: What are the biggest challenges to our urban tree canopy?

Watertown has lost so much of the beautiful, protective neighborhood canopy I celebrated when I moved here in 1978. Almost all the big street trees in my neighborhood are gone. One by one, we've lost them to over-salted roads; to damage by people who don't understand the critical importance of protecting tree root systems; to developers who clear-cut the trees on a property to maximize profit; to draconian utility pruning; and to road projects that neglect to prioritize the creation and preservation of tree canopy.  

Watertown is also experiencing an ongoing loss of new trees as well. Some are the result of a failure to know or care about what's required to ensure long term tree health. Watertown also has a past history of poor planting and maintenance of its street trees. There's nothing more demoralizing to a neighborhood than new street trees standing dead due to inadequate watering, and older trees in decline due to lack of protective maintenance or to having been poorly planted years ago. 

The good news is that Watertown’s street trees are getting better care now, thanks to the efforts of Watertown’s new Forestry Supervisor-Tree Warden Mike Micieli, and strong support from our new DPW Director Tom Brady.  Mike has rewritten the city’s forestry contracts so that the quality of planting and pruning work is much improved.  Mike is also working on providing supplemental watering to help new trees survive in drought, and is engaging with City and State contractors to try to better protect our street trees from construction damage.

Q: So how does TFW work for the trees? 

Well, we're eager to help Watertown develop an Urban Forest Master Plan, including a strong, effective tree protection ordinance for both public and private trees, with a Forestry Division, including community outreach staff, equipped to support that effort.  

We engage with city meetings when the topic is trees, and encourage our fellow residents to do this too. We strongly support Watertown's Tree Warden Mike Micieli in his work.

We write articles and social media posts and hold public education events to help grow awareness of the importance of big trees and tree ecosystems in urban settings like Watertown, especially their role in mitigating the heat island effect.  

We engage with developers to try to persuade them to plan landscaping carefully to ensure trees are included and that those trees can have long, healthy lifetimes. This means picking species that are suited to the site and to a changing climate, giving them proper space and soil when planted, and watering them adequately in their early years.

Maybe the most exciting thing lately is our Miyawaki Forest project. Last October, with the help of grants from the Bosch Community Fund and Watertown Community Foundation, TFW and our subgroup Forests for Watertown engaged with the Watertown community to plant Watertown's first Miyawaki Forest, at the Lowell School. Carefully-planned tiny forests are even more powerful than individual trees in counteracting the dangerous effects of urban heat, since after a few years they become self-sustaining ecosystems. We're continuing to support the tiny forest at Lowell School as it establishes itself and to support a school curriculum that engages students with the forest. We're also beginning to talk with residents in other heat-impacted Watertown neighborhoods to see if there's interest in those neighborhoods in establishing tiny forests of their own.

Q: What are TFW's key goals for in the coming years?

There's still a strong need for community activism to protect our Watertown’s urban forest. By far the biggest challenge to our urban tree canopy has been lack of understanding of the immense community and environmental benefits that come from preserving the long term health of our urban trees. Trees are key players in our urban ecosystem, and for better or worse, we are part of that ecosystem too. When healthy neighborhood trees are destroyed, that damage impacts the health and welfare of the whole neighborhood – and not just the people, but also the insects, birds and mammals, and the other plants. 

Understanding is growing, but is still far from universal. In the years to come TFW hopes to help Watertown adopt and support a strong tree protection ordinance, with public education and with a strong forestry infrastructure.

We’d also like to get more neighbors involved in TFW! Our website is about to go offline while it's being moved to a new site, but folks can follow us on facebook and instagram. New active members and supporters are very welcome. Please email trees4watertown@gmail.com to learn more or attend a monthly meeting!

Q: Libby what can people do in their yards to make a difference?

First: Protect the big healthy trees you have. Consider them an investment. Find a Certified Arborist who has training in risk assessment and can visit your tree every couple years to ensure it stays healthy and safe.

Second: See if there's a good site on your property where you can invest in a tree that will provide shade from hot summer sun or a windbreak against winter wind. Along with providing beauty and privacy, a carefully sited tree can significantly help reduce heating or cooling bills. If you decide to plant a tree, learn how to properly plant and maintain it.

Third: If there's a new city tree in front of your house, please consider filling its watering bags when they're empty!  When young street trees die it's most often from lack of adequate watering. Unlike trees in a lawn, which it's possible to overwater, it's hard to overwater a tree in Watertown's rocky planting strips.

Fourth: If you don’t have a street tree in your planting strip, then request one from the City, by calling 311 or filling in this form on the City’s website. 

Q: Great tips! Let's close with a 3 question lightning round! First, what are your 3 go-to places to eat locally?  

My husband and I enjoy eating at New Ginza in Watertown Square, and a summertime dining favorite is the patio at Bar 'Cino. Our favorite take-out place is Roxanne's on Mount Auburn Street.

Q: Second, what's your favorite local tree?  

My favorite local tree is the magnificent Swamp White Oak at the corner of School Street and Mount Auburn Street, in front of the Mosesian Cultural Center. It is such a magnificent urban survivor.  

Q: Third: If you could plant any tree anywhere in Watertown -- what would it be, where, and why?

That's a hard one to answer. Certainly our school playgrounds badly need more tree shade, and benches so that families can sit in the shade of a tree to watch their children play.

In a perfect world, every street in Watertown would be redesigned to create living space for more street trees, to be dappled with shade in the summer! And every development would prioritize creating sites for long-lived trees.