There are more than a dozen trees on my block now; when I bought my house, on the edge of Bernal Heights a few doors from Cesar Chavez St., there were only three. Each of those trees was put in for free, planted by volunteers from Friends of the Urban Forest, a San Francisco nonprofit that’s planted tens of thousands of trees on San Francisco streets since its start in 1981. You can see a gallery of San Francisco street trees on their website, which also links to a map of city flora. The Chronicle did an article on the tree map recently.

Not only will they come and plant a tree in front of your house for free, they’ll maintain it for free, replace old trees which have lived out their lives, and employ young people while they’re at it. They involve neighbors and homeowners in their Saturday planting days, because when people help plant the tree in front of their house, they’re more likely to care for it. I love the two trees in front of my house, each now more than ten years old.

They’re planting in Noe Valley this coming Saturday. Contact them and help out.

Anticipation grows for the opening of the San Francisco Garden Show, whose opening night party is tonight. All this past weekend, and for months prior, the bright stars of the Northern California garden design scene have been prepping for the annual show at the Cow Palace. The crews have moved tons of earth & built some beautiful works that last for mere days. Here’s last year’s winning garden designers Organic Mechanics (pictured with Show Producer Kay Estey at last year’s opening night fete’. )

For those interested in a behind the scenes look, one of the designers in this year’s show, Michelle Derviss, has started a Garden Porn blog that details some of the many hundreds of hours of preparation that went into her exhibit, including battling “Bio-Walls”, etc…

The show opens to the public Wednesday morning March 12 and is open everday until 8pm except the closing day Sunday, when it finally shutters in the late afterrnoon…

more info at http://www.gardenshow.com/sf/