Concordia Learning Landscape Arboretum

Since April 2010, tree plantings at the public school have been done as a collaboration between the city’s Urban Forestry department, the non-profit Friends of Trees organization, and a dedicated group of trained volunteers from the neighborhood known as the Concordia Tree Team. The Portland school district supports the effort by providing mulch for the trees and access to water. The volunteers annually weed and mulch the trees. They also water the trees each summer and provide early structural pruning.

Because it was intentionally planned as an outdoor classroom, the arboretum has all four functional types of trees (deciduous and evergreen broadleaves, and deciduous and evergreen conifers). One can see three of the five deciduous conifer genera in the arboretum. A dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) from China grows next to its North American relative the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), making comparison easy. Not far away is the golden larch (Pseudolarix amabalis).