A tiny start to a very ambitious project got underway when Rec and Parks installed a few new sycamore trees in Civic Center Plaza, though this lofty landscape design has been stalled for years.

If you’re a fan of San Francisco outdoor spaces, it may excite you that today is Golden Gate Park’s 154th birthday. But it may excite you a lot more that across town, in Civic Center Plaza, new sycamore trees were just installed in what KPIX reports on as a grand new landscape design for the plaza, a redesign that is rich with many more trees.  

The above KPIX segment details the addition of the first few new sycamore trees Rec and Parks just installed as part of this plan. Admittedly, there are only four new trees being added to the current batch, some of which are going on 90 years old. These sycamore trees are recognizable for their unique shape most noticeable when they're leafless and they've been pruned, and they got their moment of fame in the 1978 Donald Sutherland horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers during that film’s climactic scene.  

But as KPIX explains, there are big plans to add a lot more trees and significantly beautify the plaza.

"The biggest goal of the plan is to reintroduce vegetation on a grand scale," founding partner of the redesign firm CMG Landscape Architecture Willett Moss told the station . "In addition to the existing 350 trees, add another 300 trees."

The website for this redesign looks very exciting! But let us throw cold water on all of this by pointing out that these plans were adopted way back in 2019, and there is little progress to show for any of the efforts.

The recent addition of the UN Plaza skate park is a sign of the often-shifting, inconsistent visions for remaking that outdoor area. And as KPIX points out, “There have been 10 different plans presented for Civic Center over the past 50 years. Two a decade.”

So if you want to see new trees in the Civic Center area, your best bet for the near future may be just enjoying the beautiful but fake LED trees that will remain in UN Plaza for the next couple years.

Related: And Just Like That, UN Plaza Becomes a Skate Park [SFist]

Image: CMG Landscape Architecture

The MacArthur Foundation's fellowships were announced Wednesday, and among the honorees receiving one of the famed, no-strings-attached grants is Oakland-based designer and landscape architect Walter Hood.

Hood Design Studio is known for local projects like the design of Oakland's Lafayette Square Park and Splashpad Park next to Lake Merritt, and most recently it won a commission to reimagine the rooftop and rear gardens at the Oakland Museum of California. As Hood explains in the video below, he's interested in "bringing forward" pieces of history in each space he designs, as opposed to trying to erase history and build on top of it.

Hood is among this year's 26 fellows who will receive grants of $625,000 spread over five years — grants that are simply meant to allow them to continue their work with less financial worry.

This year's honorees include acclaimed cartoonist and graphic novelist Linda Barry, pragmatist philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, and composer Mary Halvorson.

The other Bay Area honoree this year is Berkeley-based attorney and restorative justice advocate sujatha baliga.

The new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, whenever it actually opens, will feature a median dotted with 88 palm trees that will blow in the breeze and possibly die within months.

Landscapers charged with sourcing the trees are now scouring the Bay Area for fine examples, like Suisun City's David Kling's two Canary Island date palms, for which they're paying $1,000 to $1,500 apiece. We are guessing the poor trees will go into shock upon arriving at the chilly Bay, which is a far cry from the warmer climes of the North Bay, but maybe the landscapers know better. The lush Canary Island palms, the same kind that are planted along the Embarcadero, are hardy but they're also vulnerable to something called Fusarium Wilt, which has recently killed 26 of the Embarcadero trees.

They may be a perfectly fine and pretty choice, however, as long as they avoid disease, and Mike Sullivan, author of "The Trees of San Francisco," told the Chron in 2006 that the Canary Island palms "do extremely well in our climate."

We can't find a rendering anywhere of the planned location of the trees, but they will apparently be planted all along the center of the eastern span, in graduating heights, starting with the approach at the Oakland shore. The trees on the western portion of the span won't be planted until after the bridge opens to traffic. But anyone who's spotted a rendering is encouraged to share. The plantings, which will include some other fauna as well, are all part of a contract for finishing work to connect the new bridge to the existing toll plaza. [Update: According to this simulation, all the trees will be only on the approach to the bridge, not on the bridge itself.]

And if you have a Canary Island palm tree you'd like to get rid of, you should email IBuyPalms@gmail.com, and you might get paid for it.

As we discussed a couple weeks back, the official word is that the bridge will not open as planned on Labor Day but will likely open in December, however a last-ditch effort at a quick-fix to the cracked bolt problem may be underway, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission seemed intrigued by the idea. So stay tuned for more on that.

[CBS 5]
[Mercury News]