Plant Tomorrow's Canopy Today.Part two
What You CanActually Do
You have seen what Montclair looks like without its trees. This is the part that fixes it: what to plant, how to get a tree for nothing, and how to put yours on the record.
In short
- Plant a tree that will pass thirty feet. Thirteen native species, what each one feeds, and where it will grow. See the list.
- It doesn't have to cost anything. Move a seedling a squirrel planted, gather acorns, or take one from the Township's spring giveaway. Three free ways.
- The big trees are all about the same age and will go at about the same time. Their replacements need to be in the ground now, not after. Why plant now.
- Then log your tree and dedicate it to someone. Every tree recorded goes on a public list we will bring to the Council. Add yours.
What to Plant
Thirteen native trees for Montclair
The Species
Trees that will still matter in 2060
Every one is native to northern New Jersey, grows well past thirty feet, and belongs to a group of trees the National Wildlife Federation ranks among the most important for wildlife in our region. Caterpillar counts are per group — plant any oak and you are feeding from the same pool.
White Oak
Quercus alba 80–100 ftThe most valuable tree you can plant here, and the slowest to repay you — which is why it has to go in now.
Feeds hairstreaks, underwings, and the polyphemus and imperial moths. Acorns feed blue jays, wild turkeys, squirrels, chipmunks, wood ducks and deer. Old oaks develop the hollows screech owls and flying squirrels nest in.
Sun and room. Never under wires.
Northern Red Oak
Quercus rubra 60–75 ftThe oak for people who want to see something happen. Faster than white oak, and long established on Montclair streets.
The same food web as all our oaks. Heavy autumn acorn crops for jays and squirrels — which is how oaks get planted without us.
Takes urban soil better than most oaks. Full sun. Montclair's replacement list flags the red oak group for bacterial leaf scorch, so ask the Township Arborist before choosing it over a white oak.
Swamp White Oak
Quercus bicolor 50–60 ftThe oak for the difficult corner — the low spot that stays wet, or the packed ground beside the driveway.
Full oak food web, with large acorns taken by waterfowl and squirrels.
Handles wet ground, compaction and road salt better than white oak.
Black Oak
Quercus velutina 50–80 ftThe oak for dry, poor, sandy ground — and the one most likely to be growing wild on your property already.
Acorns take two years to ripen, so a black oak carries two crops at once and feeds jays, squirrels, turkeys and deer in years when other oaks fail.
Drought-tolerant once established. Also in the red oak group, so check with the Township Arborist first. Don't prune it in spring or early summer — fresh cuts in the growing season are how oak wilt spreads.
Black Cherry
Prunus serotina 50–60 ftSecond only to the oaks, and much quicker to establish.
Feeds the red-spotted purple, coral hairstreak, cecropia and promethea moths. Summer fruit goes to robins, catbirds, thrushes, orioles, woodpeckers, raccoons and foxes.
Sun to part shade, undemanding. Fruit drop makes it a poor choice over a patio or a parked car.
Sweet Birch & River Birch
Betula lenta, Betula nigra40–70 ftFast, and the best value per year of growth on this list.
Feeds mourning cloak and luna moths. Catkins and seed carry goldfinches, pine siskins, chickadees and redpolls through winter.
River birch is the better bet for hot, wet or difficult ground, and resists bronze birch borer. Avoid European white birch.
Shagbark Hickory
Carya ovata 70–90 ftBadly underplanted, and one of the few trees whose bark is itself habitat.
Feeds the luna moth, walnut sphinx and regal moth. The peeling bark plates are prime summer roosts for bats. Nuts feed squirrels, chipmunks and wood ducks.
Deep taproot — plant it small and leave it alone. Slow, and very long-lived.
Eastern White Pine
Pinus strobus 80+ ftThe only evergreen here, and the one that does the winter work.
Seeds feed crossbills, nuthatches, chickadees and squirrels. The dense branching is critical winter cover for songbirds and owls — shelter no bare tree offers in January.
Fast. Needs real space, and dislikes road salt.
Sugar Maple
Acer saccharum 60–75 ftThe classic Montclair street tree, still worth planting where conditions suit it.
Feeds the rosy maple moth and cecropia. Early flowers are an important first nectar source; seed feeds grosbeaks and squirrels.
Dislikes road salt, packed soil and reflected heat — give it lawn, not a curb strip. If your block is already mostly maple, plant something else. A street of one kind of tree is one pest away from bare.
American Basswood
Tilia americana 60–80 ftAlso called the bee tree, and it earns the name.
June flowers are among the heaviest nectar sources of the year for bumblebees, honeybees and native solitary bees. Older trunks hollow and become nesting habitat.
Wants deep, moist soil. Quick for a tree this size.
American Elm
Ulmus americana 60–80 ftThe tree that made the American street. It is plantable again — but only in the right form.
Feeds question mark, eastern comma and mourning cloak butterflies. Early seed is a significant spring food for finches and squirrels.
Plant only Dutch-elm-disease-tolerant kinds — 'Princeton', 'Valley Forge', 'New Harmony'. Tolerant is not immune. Have the nursery name the cultivar in writing.
Tulip Tree
Liriodendron tulipifera 80–100 ftThe fastest route to real canopy we have, and a true native. On Montclair's own Tier 1 list.
The main food plant of the eastern tiger swallowtail. The orange-and-green flowers draw hummingbirds and bees.
Very fast, very large, wants deep soil and sun. Give it the biggest space you have.
Blackgum
Nyssa sylvatica 40–60 ftThe best autumn colour of any native we grow, and a serious wildlife tree.
Early-autumn fruit is high in fat and timed almost exactly to songbird migration. The flowers are prized by beekeepers.
Tolerates wet ground and part shade. Slow, and trouble-free.
Before you buy
- Don't plant ash.
- Emerald ash borer has already cost Montclair roughly 2,000 trees. Ash feeds a lot of wildlife, but it is not a viable choice here.
- Think twice about beech and hemlock.
- Both are excellent natives under active pressure in New Jersey — beech leaf disease and hemlock woolly adelgid. Plant them knowing that.
- Site black walnut carefully.
- A fine wildlife tree, but its roots suppress tomatoes, azaleas and much else. Keep it away from the vegetable garden.
- Check the wires.
- Nothing on this list belongs under overhead lines. If wires run along your frontage, put the big tree in back or on the far side.
- Buy small.
- A young whip establishes faster and usually overtakes an expensive balled-and-burlapped tree within a decade.
- Protect it from our wild neighbors.
- For the first several years, use tree guards to protect trees from deer, squirrels and rabbits. You can plant trees and coexist with wildlife! For more, see the Montclair Wildlife Coalition's guide to your yard.
- If you're replacing a removed tree, check the Township list first.
- Chapter 324 requires replacement one-to-one with a native species from the list the Township publishes. Check it before you plant, so your tree counts.
Planting near a big tree without harming it
- Stay outside the drip line if you can.
- A mature tree's roots sit within and just beyond the edge of its crown, with feeder roots running half again as far out, and most of them in the top twelve to eighteen inches of soil. Root damage is a leading cause of mature tree decline, so the safest ground is past the crown edge, not under it.
- Aim for the gap that's coming.
- Put the young tree where the light will be once the old one is gone — the sunnier edge of the crown, off to one side rather than directly beneath. And leave a way in for equipment, in case the old tree ever has to come down.
- Dig small, and add nothing.
- A seedling or small nursery tree needs a small hole, which is the point. Don't cut roots thicker than a finger, and don't spread soil over the root zone to make a bed. Buried roots suffocate.
- Leave the old trunk room.
- Keep planting and mulch back from the root flare, and leave a few feet of clear ground so the tree can still be checked at its base.
- Choose something that can wait in shade.
- Sugar maple, basswood and blackgum will sit for years in shade until the canopy opens. White oak copes better than red oak. Tulip tree and the birches won't — they need full sun, so give them open ground.
- Water both trees.
- The young one is competing with an established root system for every drop. Water it through at least its first two or three seasons, and more in a dry summer than you would in open lawn.
Root distribution — feeder roots extending half again beyond the drip line, most roots in the top twelve to eighteen inches — from University of Maryland Extension, "Planting a Tree or Shrub." Root damage as a leading cause of mature tree decline, and the warning against spreading fill soil over a root zone, from Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories, "Made in the Shade: Planting Under Trees." Trunk clearance, access for inspection, and supplemental water for the first two to three seasons from Tree Health Management, "Planting Under Mature Trees"; mulch practice from Penn State Extension, "Making Sure Your Young Shade Trees Survive." Shade tolerance from the USDA Forest Service, Silvics of North America (Burns & Honkala, Agriculture Handbook 654), which classes sugar maple as very tolerant and able to persist suppressed beneath a closed canopy until a gap opens, northern red oak as intermediate and less tolerant than white oak, and sweet birch as intolerant; basswood and blackgum are classed tolerant and yellow-poplar intolerant in Ohio State University Extension's tolerance table. Siting and access judgments are general arboricultural practice rather than a single published source.
No Nursery Required
Three ways to plant a tree for nothing at all
A nursery oak costs a few hundred dollars, and not everyone has ground to put one in. Neither is a reason to sit this out. The best trees in Montclair were planted by squirrels, and the method still works.
Move a seedling a squirrel planted in the wrong place
Every autumn, squirrels bury far more acorns than they dig up. Come spring your beds and hedge lines are full of oak seedlings — most of them doomed, because they came up eighteen inches from a foundation or in the middle of a path. One of them, moved four feet, becomes a ninety-foot tree.
How: Move it while it is dormant — late autumn after leaf drop, or early spring before the buds break. Move it young: an oak sends down a taproot fast, and a seedling in its first or second year moves far better than a waist-high sapling. Dig wide and deep enough to keep the taproot whole, replant at the same depth, water it in, and mulch — never against the stem. Then cage it.
Gather acorns and plant them
An acorn is a free oak. The failure rate is high and the wait is longer, which is why almost nobody does it — and why the ones who do end up with the trees.
How: Collect in September and October, from the ground, once the caps come away easily. Drop them in water and discard the floaters and anything with a small round exit hole — those are weeviled. Plant an inch or two deep, several to a spot, in the ground or in deep pots. White oak, swamp white oak and chestnut oak sprout that same autumn, so get them in quickly. Red and black oak need the winter cold first — plant them in autumn anyway and let the season do the work. Cover the spot with hardware cloth, or the squirrels will simply take them back.
One caution: acorns are food. Jays, turkeys, squirrels, chipmunks and deer are all working the same crop. Take a modest share and leave the rest. And check before collecting on public land — Township and Essex County parks have their own rules, and the point is to be able to say plainly where every tree came from.
Pot up your volunteers and give them away
If you have mature oaks, you are already producing seedlings you would otherwise pull as weeds. Pot them instead. Grow them on for a season, and hand them to the neighbour with the bare front yard, or to somebody who has been meaning to plant and hasn't.
And if you rent, or have no ground at all: a seedling will grow happily in a deep pot for a year or two while you find it a home — a friend's yard, a relative's, a neighbour who says yes. The tree does not need to be on your property to be yours. Log it here either way, and name whoever the ground belongs to alongside your own.
And if you'd rather buy one, it needn't be expensive
- The New Jersey Forest Service nursery.
- The state sells bare-root seedlings by the bundle each spring — northern red oak ran $1.60 a tree, or $40 for a bundle of 25, in the 2026 catalogue. Orders are taken through the end of April, with pickup from late March. Read the certification on the order form before you buy: the stock is sold for forestation and conservation planting, and the terms are worth understanding if the tree is going in your front yard. NJForestServiceNursery@dep.nj.gov, 732-928-0029.
- Arbor Day Foundation seedlings in bulk.
- Bare-root seedlings sold in quantity at a few dollars a tree — shop.arborday.org. Cheap enough that a block can split an order, and small stock establishes better than expensive nursery specimens anyway.
- Free seedlings from the Township, every spring.
- Montclair hands out seedlings to residents each spring through the New Jersey Tree Recovery Campaign. Watch for the giveaway around Earth Day, take what you can use, and plant them somewhere they can grow tall.
Nursery prices and dates from the New Jersey Forest Service Nursery bare-root seedling catalogue for 2026 (NJDEP); prices and availability change each season, so check before ordering. The seedling-distribution programme is described by the New Jersey Community Forestry Program and the New Jersey Tree Foundation; dates and quantities vary year to year.
Why Plant
Why it has to be a big tree, and why it has to be now
Plant for the person who isn't born yet
A canopy tree put in the ground this fall will not do its real work until the 2050s. But when it does, those living next to it will be grateful to you. Nothing you can buy will help the next generation more, and nothing can be bought later to make up for the decades you didn't plant.
That is also why we ask for a big tree. A tree that stops at fifteen feet is a pleasant thing to own, but it is not shade, it does not hold stormwater, and it is not habitat. Neither is a row of arborvitae — and our permit review found that more than a fifth of private replacement plantings in Montclair were exactly that. Large trees are not simply better; they are better even in the short run, and better still when given open ground rather than a tight corner.
Many of Montclair's best trees are reaching old age
Nearly every canopy tree in those photographs went in decades ago. Disease, storms and old age will not wait until Montclair is ready, and we have watched it happen once already: roughly 2,000 ash trees lost to a single insect.
That is what succession planting is for, and it is the part almost everyone skips. If we wait until an old tree comes down to plant its replacement, we are choosing to spend three decades on a street with no shade. Plant now, and the replacement is already thirty years grown on the day the old one goes.
Foresters judge a canopy by its spread of ages, not only its total cover. A widely used target has roughly 40% of trees young, 25% maturing, 25% mature and 10% old. A canopy that is mostly old is not a rich canopy. It is a cliff.
Large-stature trees deliver greater benefits than smaller, shorter-lived ones even over short time frames, and trees in open positions outperform those hemmed in: Forest Research, Selecting Urban Trees for Ecosystem Service Provision (UK Forestry Commission, 2021), modelling thirty species over a hundred years. Daytime summer cooling rises non-linearly with tree cover and is greatest once a block passes about 40%: Ziter, Pedersen, Kucharik & Turner, PNAS 116(15), 2019, 7575–7580 — daytime only, single city, and cooling does occur below 40%, just far less. Montclair's last measured canopy, in 2016, was 38%. The principle that a street-tree population needs a spread of size and age classes is from N. A. Richards, Urban Ecology 7(2), 1983, 159–171; the 40/25/25/10 proportions are the trunk-diameter version used in recent studies, after Wang et al. (2018).
After You Plant
Help us document the plantings
The Record
Log the tree. Name the person.
We are keeping a public record of every large native tree planted on private property in Montclair — what it is, roughly where it went in, who planted it, and who it is for. A tree in memory of someone. A tree in gratitude to someone. A tree for a child who will be a senior the year it reaches full height.
- Species and planting date
- Your street — you don't have to share your full address if you prefer not to
- How it came to you: nursery, transplanted seedling, acorn, or a gift
- A photograph of the tree in the ground
- A dedication, if you want one
- Your pledge to water it through its first three summers
Two minutes. Nothing is published without your say-so. We'll write to you in two years to ask one question: is it still alive?
The Ask
And then we take the list to the Township
When we have reached a good number of new saplings planted, we will bring it to the Council and ask that the names of the people the trees are dedicated to be permanently memorialized — as those of the residents who gave part of their own property so that future Montclairians could benefit from climate resiliency.
Sustainable Montclair has documented the canopy we lost in the past six years. A new shade tree ordinance will soon be introduced to help us ensure that all trees removed be replaced. However, we need to do more and plan ahead. Even if it's just small tiny seedlings. This is our chance to give back to those in the past who thought of our future.
Caterpillar figures: National Wildlife Federation, Keystone Native Plants — Eastern Temperate Forests, Ecoregion 8, from research by Dr. Doug Tallamy (University of Delaware) and Jarrod Fowler; counts are per plant genus, not per species. nwf.org. The chickadee brood figure is Tallamy's. Canopy-loss and privacy-screen figures are from The Vanishing Canopy, Sustainable Montclair's analysis of 1,464 Chapter 324 removal permits obtained under OPRA, 2020–2025. Replacement requirements: Township Code Chapter 324, Article I. Mature heights are typical for northern New Jersey and vary with site.
Sustainable Montclair · sustainablemontclair@gmail.com · 2026