If you compare photos of San Jose streets in the 1970s and ’80s to those taken in recent years, one thing tends to stand out above everything else: The city has a lot more trees now. And if nonprofit Our City Forest has its way, San Jose will have even more in the future.
The organization, which not only plants trees around the city but helps people learn how to nurture and maintain them, has added 80,000 trees to the urban canopy since Rhonda Berry planted the organization’s first seeds in 1991. Our City Forest held its first gala fundraiser Sept. 25, which also served as a baton-passing between Berry, who has retired, and her successor, Executive Director Tara Sreekrishnan.
Our City Forest founder Rhonda Berry, center, speaks as emcees Scott Budman and Marla Davies look on during a fundraising gala held Sept. 25, 2026 at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose. (Courtesy Our City Forest)
At the event, State Sen. Dave Cortese presented Berry with a state resolution in her honor, but a few days later, his office announced something more helpful than a plaque for Our City Forest: $2.625 million in state funding.
“Our urban forests are essential to creating healthier, more resilient neighborhoods,” Cortese said, adding that the state funding would help Our City Forest make up for previous funding shortfalls, preserve its workforce, restore environmental and expand planting trees and climate-resilient landscaping in neighborhoods that need them most.
Trees don’t just make a neighborhood look nicer, Sreekrishnan noted, they also improve people’s quality of life. One big reason is the shade they provide can keep temperatures down — something we’ve been reminded of daily during an unusually sweltering October.
“Even in San Jose there are neighborhoods that are 6 to 7 degrees hotter in the city, and it comes down to tree canopy,” she said.
Not surprisingly, those hotter neighborhoods tend also to be lower-income, especially in East and Central San Jose. Our City Forest is working to balance the scales from development decisions that took place decades ago.
The Sept. 25 gala naturally had a nostalgic feel for Berry, who had a chance to connect with longtime supporters, friends and volunteers. And there are a lot of people in the latter category: Our City Forest has relied on a massive corps of more than 175,000 people over the years who have been engaged in its mission, including the Tree Amigos, who are specially trained and help lead the volunteer projects. You can find out more about their programs at www.ourcityforest.org.
“It was definitely a chance to honor Rhonda Berry’s extraordinary legacy,” Sreekrishnan said of the gala. “What she created is more than a tree-planting organization — it’s a community institution. And this investment gives us the ability to protect that legacy and carry it forward.”
AT YOUR SERVICE: More than 650 employees for the city of San Jose got to get away from their desks Wednesday afternoon and get their hands dirty working on service projects around the city. This was the second “One Team, One City, One Community Day of Service” the city has held, following a successful launch in March.
The projects city employees worked on included cleaning trails, planting trees, removing litter and graffiti, serving meals to seniors and making adoption kids for the San Jose Animal Care center. Following a lunch and rousing pep talks from San Jose City Manager Jennifer Maguire and Mayor Matt Mahan, the municipal workers split off into teams at various parks, community centers and nonprofit organizations like Sacred Heart Community Service and the Spartan Closet at San Jose State.
“Public service is not just what we do as part of our job, but it is who we are, how we show up for one another, our neighbors, and in many cases as residents of this city,” Maguire said. “Days like this remind us of what we can accomplish when we come together as one team with a shared purpose.”
The effort may be making San Jose an example for the state. Maguire said she’s already gotten calls from other cities asking how they can replicate the day of service.
TRANSIT YOU CAN WEAR: I’ve been wishing for a while that VTA would produce an annual holiday sweater like BART does, but until that dream is fulfilled I’ll have to be satisfied with the new online merchandise store the Santa Clara County transit agency launched last month. My favorite of the items offered so far is a transit-vehicle T-shirt emblazoned with “408” — and it comes in both bus and light-rail varieties so you can rep your ride. You can check it out at www.vta.org/vta-store.