MORRISTOWN’S COMMUNITY AND URBAN FOREST

The residents of the Town of Morristown (“the Town”, “Morristown”) care about the place where they live, work, and recreate. The Town recognizes the important role of the urban and community forest— exemplified by achieving the status as a “Tree City USA” community for 8 years and recognized with “Growth Awards” for 5 years. Among the many things that make the Town special is its physical environment—the urban forest—consisting of tree-lined streets, abundant parks, natural areas, trees in parking lots and framing buildings, flowering trees, trees with swings in backyards, and trees edging streams and ponds cooling the waters for aquatic life. One of the most important responsibilities is to protect these resources and ensure Morristown will always be a beautiful, healthy, and livable town, long into the future.

The Town has a vibrant urban forest that continues to be created, modified, and removed primarily by people, and sustaining it will require ongoing human intervention. The goal of this intervention is a sustainable urban forest— one that optimizes the benefits of trees while meeting established safety and economic goals. Achieving this requires robust management, diverse funding, adequate staffing, effective policies, and maintenance actions consistent with best practices.

The Town of Morristown plays a pivotal role in fighting climate change and was awarded a $31,000 grant from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Advancing tree equity enables the Town and the State to address the three pillars of thriving communities: social, environmental, and economic vitality. Lack of tree canopy can compromise social, environmental, and economic quality of life for some of Morristown’s most vulnerable residents. The resilience-planning grant awarded to Morristown enabled the assessment of the current urban forest and provided critical data about its structure and composition to make better inform decisions to maximize ecological benefits.

The Town of Morristown actively manages the public urban forest consisting of trees in parks, along streets in the rights-of-way, and on other Town-owned properties. As of July 2022, the Town is completing the 5-year pruning cycle for public trees. Supporting these management efforts, the Morristown Shade Tree Commission has a mission to “protect, enhance, and maintain our tree canopy for the benefit of Morristown residents.” Maintaining and expanding Morristown’s urban forest is supported by the Town’s 2014 Master Plan which aims to “become the most welcoming, beautiful, healthy, resilient, and sustainable place to live, work, and play in New Jersey.”

Fill out the form to access the full Tree Inventory Report Morristown, New Jersey