This reporting project was made possible in part by a grant from the Fourth Estate Fund.
The North Carolina Urban Forest Council (NCUFC) held its 17th annual Great North Carolina Tree Conference earlier this month in Hickory, NC.
Ben Misleh, landscape superintendent for the City of Wilmington, said, “The Conference is an opportunity to share ideas with other communities from across the state. These ideas can inform how we shape Wilmington's urban forest. Hopefully some of our ideas get used by others as well.”
Educational sessions were led by industry professionals and researchers for landscape contractors and architects, arborists, tree advocates, urban foresters, and municipal planners. Attendees could earn credit toward continuing education.
In 2026, the NCUFC celebrated 30 years of helping to sustain the urban forests of North Carolina. According to their website, the group aims to educate the public, “promote public interest and participation,” provide professional development, and help to identify human, environmental, and financial resources all toward sustaining urban forests.
Kicking off this year's conference, Arbor Day Foundation Corporate Partnership Manager Mac Martin said, “This work is hard to keep going.” He noted that trees are often cut from city budgets, there is a shortage of consulting arborists, and most areas have a small staff to care and plan for city trees. Volunteers only have so many hours after working their regular jobs, and there is a lack of community education about the importance of trees to public health, not just for beautification, Martin said.
But Martin also sees hopeful signs. He says more corporations are investing in trees, not just for tax breaks, but because they see the mental and physical health benefits for their employees. Misleh added, “Planting and maintaining the urban forest often feels like an insurmountable task. But there are urban forest professionals across the state doing amazing work. We all are making a difference one tree at a time.”
Wilmington is a Tree City USA. This designation has four requirements: a tree board, a tree care ordinance with clear guidelines and enforceability, an annual budget of at least $2 per capita for forestry activities, and annual public Arbor Day observance with an official mayoral proclamation. Martin said trees create “the communities people want to live in.” As a result, many cities with this designation budget much more than the minimum toward these efforts.
This year’s Tree Conference sessions included work from NC State researchers. One project involved utilizing citizen science as a method for locating dangerous trees and creating a tree inventory. Another project involved storing, processing, and reutilizing wood from campus trees that were removed. This project won an award for Outstanding Project from NCUFC, along with the Invasive Plant Removal Project in Durham.
Dan Whitehead of HortSource, LLC — a company he termed “a horticultural dating service” — shared information about newly developed tree varieties that work well in parts of North Carolina, such as Jack’s Creek Easter Red Cedar, which survived a direct hit from Hurricane Helene because of the “excellent root structure.” Some red maples that were previously doing well in NC are now struggling with the heat and humidity, but Red Sky Maple seems to handle our weather much better.
Kevin Lilley, assistant director of facilities & grounds in Durham, spoke about the history of redlining in Durham and other cities and how this practice affected where trees are located today. Redlining was brought about primarily by mortgage companies like the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation who created “Residential Security Maps” that determined who got loans and who didn’t, based primarily on wealth, skin color, and religious affiliation. Black, immigrant (especially Jewish), and low-income neighborhoods were shown with a red line around them on the map, resulting in less investment in those neighborhoods. This harmed financial prospects for the neighborhoods but also decreased their access to infrastructure money, including for the care and planting of trees. Lilley said, “Trees are not decorations. They are infrastructure.”
As a result of decisions made decades ago, those Durham neighborhoods still have fewer trees, higher ambient temperatures (5-15 degrees hotter than historically wealthier areas), higher incidents of asthma, higher rates of student absenteeism (in part because it’s harder to sleep when it’s hot), and higher energy bills. Lilley showed a map of hot spots in Durham that virtually match the redlined neighborhoods of the 1930’s. He explained that a single large tree can cool an area as effectively as multiple air conditioners. Lilley said, “Environmental inequity is human inequity.”
Durham is working to overcome past racist choices. They are conducting a city tree inventory, looking at heat studies, land use maps, and demographic indicators to have what Lilley calls, “Equity-centered planning.” He adds, this is an “engineering problem with a biological solution.” Durham received a $5.3 million grant from the USDA to plant 4000 trees in historically low-canopy neighborhoods, update their canopy study, and take a city-wide street tree inventory. Lilley says, “Equitable tree placement” is “not charity, but infrastructure correction.”
Misleh said, “We know that some of the same issues persist in Wilmington. It would be interesting to dive deeper into that to help guide decision-making about the future of Wilmington's urban forest.”
Casey Geer, programs coordinator for the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, said, “In disadvantaged and formerly redlined communities, investments in green infrastructure have historically been lacking, leading to tree inequity. ACFT works to address this environmental justice issue by planting trees in Wilmington’s under-canopied areas—because everyone deserves the health, economic, and aesthetic benefits of trees.”
The second day of the Tree Conference took place on Appalachian State’s Hickory Campus. App State’s arborist, Max Alff shared the university’s plan for its trees and demonstrated a Resistograph, a drill that measures the density of a tree’s wood.
Appalachian State arborist Max Alff demonstrates a Resistograph.
Jimmy Walters, who teaches TRAQ, an advanced certification for arborists, shared how to assess the mechanical risks of a tree. The conference concluded with a drone demonstration for a tree assessment.
The City of Wilmington recently received a $1.5 million grant for the urban forest. Although the planning is complete for this grant, Misleh said, “The Conference helped to confirm that the plan is sound, and that we will be able to do an enormous amount of good for Wilmington's urban forest with the grant funds.”
Misleh says, “Every day City crews plant, maintain, and prune trees. We only remove trees when it is absolutely necessary.” He added that the City grounds management department “loves trees and we hope that [the residents of Wilmington] do too.”
Alliance for Cape Fear Trees assists the city with planting and caring for street trees. Geer said, “We’re bringing what we learned at the Great NC Tree conference back to the Cape Fear region to strengthen how we plant, care for, and advocate for trees. Ideas shared by fellow tree advocates and professionals will help us take what has worked well in other cities and apply it here in the Lower Cape Fear region.”
Note: Rhonda Waterhouse is a member of Wilmington’s Tree Commission.
