Trees for the Triangle: The Importance of Urban Forestry

In this episode of Oak City Move, Sophs sits down with Dave Klemp, executive director of the environmental non-profit, Trees for the Triangle. Trees for the Triangle is a "pay what you can" non-profit that helps restore trees in the Triangle area, planting new trees as well as replanting old trees. During this episode Dave and Sophs discuss the importance of Urban Forestry (especially amongst climate change), how Trees for the Triangle is actively helping communities, as well as where he thinks urban forestry will be in the next 10-20 years. Listen to here about everything they are doing for the Triangle as well as to find out Dave's favorite tree species!

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Creators and Guests

Host

Sophs Magnanini

Public Affairs Director (2025-2026)

What is Oak City Move?

A radio program and podcast from WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2 celebrating those who enact positive changes in the Raleigh community.

00:00
Sophia Magnanini
Oak City Move is a podcast on WKNC's 88.1 FM HD1 Raleigh, where we highlight people and organizations creating positive change in the Triangle and beyond. Oak City Move can be heard on air every Other Monday on 88.1 FM HD1 Raleigh or online at wknc.org Listen for episodes and more information, go to our blog at blog.wknc.org or follow us on SoundCloud at wknc881. Hello, WKNC Raleigh. The song you just heard was Sweaty linen by Surf Ninja 3. I'm Sophia Magnanini, your host and you're listening to Oak City Move today. I'm here with a very special guest, Dave Klemp, Executive Director of Trees for the Triangle.

00:45
Sophia Magnanini
If you wanted to start off by saying a little bit about yourself, and then also for listeners who aren't too known about the Trees for Triangle, could you kind of tell us about that and how the mission has evolved?

00:59
David Klemp
Sure, yeah. My name is Dave, as you mentioned, and I am the executive Director of Trees for the Triangle. I founded Trees for the triangle back in 2017. I'm an NC State. Gosh, what's the proper word? Alumna alumnus. I can't ever remember. But I graduated with a degree in forest management from NC State. I'm also a former WKNC hangar arounder. I don't know what my title was, but I worked on Eye on the Triangle.

01:34
Sophia Magnanini
Oh, perfect.

01:36
David Klemp
It's a cool little full circle moment for me. But yeah, so what? I was studying forestry at State and then I got really interested in urban forestry and got a job with the city of Raleigh for a few years, working part time with their NeighborWoods program, which was a free tree program within the city of Raleigh. And so when that got wound down, gosh, that was probably, I think, 2016 when they shut that down. So I just thought somebody still needed to be planting trees in Raleigh and elsewhere as well. So I started Trees for the Triangle to kind of be a successor to that to some degree, knowing that we needed somebody planting trees.

02:28
David Klemp
And there had been another nonprofit based in Raleigh that had also kind of recently wound down, so there was a gap to be filled and a need for trees. So I just took an online course on how to start a nonprofit and went from there. And so 2017 we got founded. 2018 We got our 501C3 status, which is a big deal because then you're kind of a quote unquote legitimate nonprofit. Once you've got that status And I've forgotten the rest of your question.

03:06
Sophia Magnanini
No, that's perfect. That's so cool that like, not only did you kind of grow, I mean, yeah, you did. You were from around here. And then you're giving back to around here also, which is so cool because I know a lot of people that are in forestry and then a lot of them more recently have been thinking about going into the urban forestry like you have, which I feel like is very important for especially like now in the Triangle. There's so many people moving in here and new developments being built. But then we also kind of have to combat that with also making sure that like our forests stay intact and that we have enough trees. The second part of my question was, how have you seen trees for the Triangle evolve over the years since its founding?

03:57
David Klemp
Oh, well, okay. Pretty big leaps and bounds over a good number of years now. But I mean I, I just, I started, I was, you know, volunteering my time, using my personal car, driving up to Wake Forest to borrow my parents trailer so I could move trees around. And, and I had, I started with a small board of just three people. And then over time as we've kind of garnered interest and more people have been looking for ways to help with trees, we've been able to grow up our board. I eventually became a like paid staff member the first, and then now we actually have five or six folks on staff. And that's crazy, really. In the last year we've done a lot of growth in the staff capacity so we could take on bigger projects. I'm happy to say.

04:58
David Klemp
I'm sitting in our dedicated truck right now, actually with its own trailer attached to it so I can move lots and lots of trees all over the place. And you know, how we've evolved has just been that we've been trying to grow our capacity to do the same thing we always wanted to do. So we are still planting trees. We still want to plant trees everywhere we can, whether that's people's homes, schools, churches, fire stations, parks, whatever. Anything we can think of or anything that people ask us for help with, that's where we're going to go. And we do plant native trees to North Carolina, which was always a goal. But more recently we made it an official. Like, this is definitely part of our mission. Yeah.

05:53
David Klemp
So what we do isn't changing too much, thankfully, because really what's changing is just our ability to do more of it, hopefully over time.

06:08
Sophia Magnanini
That's, that's really great to hear, especially seeing Because, I mean, you guys are still a relatively younger nonprofit, but just how it started out from the passion of it all, and then now you guys are able to expand on your projects and as well as get paid for doing it and get paid for helping the communities, which is really cool. And also I really love the native trees that you guys are planting. What areas would you say you kind of spend the most time planting trees? Would it be like neighborhoods or just different areas?

06:45
David Klemp
Well, to start with where we're. I founded Trees for the Triangle as the world's first pay what you can tree planting program. And so a lot of the focus was residential trees. A lot of the focus still is residential trees. But, you know, as we grew and. And then got our 501C3 so we could start applying for grants and things. Some of the things we've applied for have been to do our program called Shade for Schools, which is a school campus planting program. So we've been doing some of that. But yeah, a lot of our. Our central. That kind of core, central model that pay what you can program is really based around residential trees because residences are what we have a lot of here, and we're losing a lot of trees.

07:43
David Klemp
Either at older homes where they're losing trees and need replacements, or when we're building new developments and new neighborhoods where they've been clear cut, there's obviously a huge need then to plant back. If we can't prevent the clear cut, and sometimes you can't or, you know, or whatever factors go into that at least. I just kind of. I use the metaphor a lot of. I feel like we're like battlefield medics just kind of scurrying back and forth to different places where we've just lost a bunch of trees and, like, trying to get trees back in place in some of those places. So lot of residential. But I mean, like I said, we want to do trees everywhere, and our motto is trees for all. So trees everywhere for all people.

08:30
Sophia Magnanini
That's awesome. That kind of leads into my next question. I mean, like your organization, like you were saying, the pay what you can, how do you guys kind of help ensure that the tree planting efforts are kind of equal across different neighborhoods? Or is there specific neighborhoods that you guys visit more? Is it just kind of depends on what's being built up, what's happening, what trees are like, being lost, what trees are being gained?

09:02
David Klemp
Yeah, I started with kind of just the scattershot approach of wherever I get asked to plant trees is where I'm going to plant trees. And you know, when you don't have a huge marketing budget, which I still don't would love one, but I don't have that. You know, your reach is only so large. So I think it tends to be people with means who are looking for trees, you know, googling tree planting that found me and asked for trees. But as we're, we've been growing, we're trying to take on more of that equity focus and hitting neighborhoods that have been historically disadvantaged or the neighborhoods that are, you know, break out multiple factors, low income or high heat island effect or a flood prone, you know, these different things where trees putting trees into the situation can help.

09:57
David Klemp
And then always from the very beginning, I always give credit to a place at the table. I don't know if you're familiar.

10:06
Sophia Magnanini
Yes, I actually have interviewed them earlier this year with Maggie. Yes.

10:11
David Klemp
Okay. I, I always love give them the credit because I, I say I lovingly ripped off that pay what you can model from them because they had just gotten started and I was just, you know, forming okay, well what is this trees for the triangle thing gonna be? And, and I, I, I knew I was gonna pull a lot from neighbor woods for inspiration for the tree planting side of things, but I, I just loved that pay what you can model so that everyone gets a chance to get, you know, in their case a hot breakfast, but in my case a new tree planted in your yard. And so I kind of merged those two core like ideas that, and that's what trees for the triangle was.

10:52
David Klemp
So that was baked into the beginning was I want, if you're worried about, you know, paying a bill or getting a tree, like pay the bill and we'll cover the, the tree. And then you know that's where the suggested donation per tree kicks in. So that if somebody pays, you know, right now our suggested donation per tree is $120 for a seven gallon tree. And so if you pay that and I can do it for 100 or 110 and I can eke out a little, you know, quote unquote profit margin. You know, every 10 people that pay the full donation, I can plant a free tree for somebody that can't pay at all. Or you know, it kind of just balances out in that way.

11:41
David Klemp
So that was always the thought was I want, I don't want to discourage anybody from getting trees who needs one. And everybody just about needs one. If you're in a brand new neighborhood in West Cary, guess what? You've got no trees there. It's scalding hot in August. If you're in southeast Raleigh, living in maybe a little bit older house, you've probably lost some trees over time. And if you didn't have the funds to replace them, we want help there too. So it's across that full spectrum. So trees for all being our motto. We're trying to live up to that.

12:17
Sophia Magnanini
That's, that's really awesome because, yeah, like you're saying the pay what you can program, it just makes. Gives so many people more options and allows them to take advantage of what you guys are doing. That kind of also leads into my next question. Could you kind of explain to listeners the importance of urban forestry in communities like those in the Triangle region that you're planting these new trees?

12:49
David Klemp
Yeah. Urban forestry is only going to grow because our cities are growing and you know, we're. Our area is of course, rapidly urbanizing or suburbanizing. If you're looking a little further out from just Raleigh into Wake Forest and Garner and other, you know, Apex, all these towns and that kind of ring around the big cities is going to get bigger and bigger with suburbs further and further out, which means clearing, which means clear cutting, which means new neighborhoods going up. And so now you're not managing large stands of forests. You're managing a tree here and a tree there. But those individual trees now are super important because that's what you have to provide your shade and cooling and rainwater absorption and all these other functions that trees serve. So it just magnifies the importance of each individual tree.

13:56
David Klemp
So, yeah, I mean, urban forestry is only going to get more important. The, the growth here is not slowing down, not for right now. We're one of the most rapidly growing areas in the whole country. So as we lose stands of forests, individual trees planted by people, for people and for all the other benefits to everybody else in the environment, they're just going to grow in importance.

14:27
Sophia Magnanini
No, that's really cool and really important because, yeah, like you were saying, this is such a new and up and coming or, well, not new and up and coming, but so many people have been moving here as of the last, like, decade. And so it's really important that, yeah, in these new neighborhoods they have those trees that they need. But I can only imagine that along with all the good that you guys do, there's a lot of challenges that you guys have to face, especially being a nonprofit. And you might not have as much funds as you need, but could you kind of tell us, let us Know if, like what the biggest challenges that you guys face or what kind of policies or local changes would help make bigger differences in urban forestry.

15:20
David Klemp
Well, one interesting thing to note is that the General assembly really kind of has a hold on how individual municipalities control their urban trees as far as what kind of laws a city can put in place to protect trees when somebody develops a lot or something, you know, for instance. So that I think is something a lot of people don't know is that it's not always up to your city or else if the city at this point kind of pushes the envelope with a tree code that's seen as too restrictive to the General assembly can basically take away the right of that city to have a tree code or tree ordinance at all. So that's sitting in downtown Raleigh at the assembly building. That power sits there. So that's an interesting phenomenon.

16:27
David Klemp
And then I just, I mean if we're talking about, we've got a lot of builders building homes and we need homes because there's a lot of demand and you know, housing prices skyrocket when demand skyrockets. So that's to be predicted, right? So if we're building homes, I would love to see builders be able to figure out a way to plant more than what is currently the bare minimum, which is not a lot. I mean, if you go to a new neighborhood and you see kind of the standard one lollipop tree per front yard, it's like, I think we could do a little bit better than that. And I think sometimes the builders, you know, to their side of things, their point of view, they'll say, well, you know, I, I'm required to do X, Y and Z by the city. Anything else costs money.

17:24
David Klemp
Or, or else, you know, when I'm required to plant street trees, they required me to do X number of trees per Y number of feet down the street. And it's got to be a 3 inch caliber tree, which is a big tree to plant to begin with. So you know, that's expensive and they don't want to do any more than they need to. So trying to figure out how we could get a lot more trees even if we start them smaller. You know, a three foot tree planted every 20ft to me is more beneficial than a tree that starts out at 12ft tall, being spaced out every 100ft or whatever it is. So basically just if we could plant more trees, even if they start smaller, a diverse arrangement of them as well, not the same Tree down every front yard.

18:21
David Klemp
If I, if I see a street with one lone red maple planted in every front yard, it makes me cry a little bit. But yeah, it's, I don't know it. There's conservation and preservation that, one side of things. And then just if we can't do that, when we can't do that, at least let's pack in new ones. So I'm not a huge policy wonk or expert for sure. I'm just a tree guy. But whatever we can do. And, and sometimes it's, you know, it might be, you know, some kind of incentive rather than, you know, we always think about the carrot and the stick and people are quick to like, let's use the stick to like beat down the businesses that are building our homes so that they have to do X what we want. Well, it's like I'm this point, consider the carrot.

19:18
David Klemp
What, what would make them want to. And so we've got one developer that we're working with on a couple of projects now. That's our first developer partner where we're trying to help them see how they can do more than what was required. And they're happy to do it. And I mean, because they're not like heartless, soulless people, they just have a job to build houses. So they've been excited that they get the chance to work with us and plant more trees. And their residents of the homes are excited that they get to a greener neighborhood from the jump. And so it's something that I think can work for everybody. It doesn't have to be a clash of titans here. We could figure this out.

20:04
Sophia Magnanini
That's really cool, especially that you guys have started working with other developers because like you were saying, yeah, it is so much kind of reliant on like the companies, the building companies like what they want to do. And so it's really just like, yeah, working together because it does benefit everyone, not just like one side. So that's really awesome that you guys are kind of making those movements, making those connections to. Hopefully in the future you'll be working with so many more developers, so many more land, neighborhood things. But because, yeah, the amount of times like you go to Apex and you drive down a neighborhood street and it's like you were saying, the one tree in the yard, the one. And there's like no other trees anywhere.

20:55
Sophia Magnanini
And so not only like you were saying, will it help the neighborhood, but also help the area just in general, but that's awesome. How do you see urban forestry evolving over the next 10 to 20 years?

21:15
David Klemp
Well, it's not a new field, but I think it is a growing field and that's only going to expand. We're going to. Urban forestry is going to be something that I hope is something that employs a lot more people that people in a lot more, not just big cities but small towns on up are thinking about as they grow. And so I'm hoping that's going to be a growing field of well trained professionals who know how to care for trees, know which trees we need to plant, etc. The other, you know, elephant in the room is, well, is our climate going to change? Is, is he. Is heat coming our way? We are seeing some creep of the range of tree species where they are starting to reach a little further north and maybe lose a little bit of their southern range.

22:24
David Klemp
And so obviously that's not something that happens typically quickly, but if humans are involved in natural process, we tend to speed things up. Right. So if we're kind of artificially thinking about, well, we know where this, these temperatures are going to head and what things are going to look like. We may start doing things like planting trees that I would typically find more in the coastal plain region like live oak or something may make its way up here more and more. And that's, you know, there's going to be people on either side of. That's kind of a debate. Should we be doing that on purpose or should we fight it to the last tree to try and keep exactly what was here before?

23:18
David Klemp
And I can see both, I can sympathize with both sides of that argument because we don't want to lose any of our beautiful native trees that we have here. But I think especially in an urban environment, which can be really tough on a tree because you're talking about it could be bone dry one day and flood the next. It could be the highest of heats. Especially if you're surrounded by asphalt and things that are, you know, reflecting heat off of them. You've got to put a tree in that can handle a pretty tough set of scenarios there. So we may be seeing some changes in what we're planting. I'm also, that's kind of a doom and gloom type thing to talk about.

24:09
David Klemp
So I also want to say I hope that what we're going to do is also find some ways to bring back some of the trees that were hugely important in urban spaces. You know, every town has an elm street and a lot of, you know, towns have a Chestnut avenue and things like that. So we lost our American chestnut and we lost our American elm. But I am hoping that as the science grows and evolves and we figure some things out, whether it's through breeding programs or CRISPR or whatever the new technologies are, and God help us, maybe AI will help us figure this out. But, you know, I'd love to hopefully see the return of some of the species that we lost due to, you know, globalization. And we, we have the chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease.

25:06
David Klemp
Dutch elm disease and chestnut blight, two diseases that knocked those hugely important trees out where we used to have elms lining our streets. Hopefully, hopefully we're going to find a way to bring those back. And so that would just be a big day for us if we could be planting more of those again. So, some positives and some negatives, but I think overall urban forestry is going to grow as a profession and it's going to get more important because. And I'm hoping more people will realize this trees are important infrastructure. We think of infrastructure being the concrete, the power lines, the WI fi, whatever, you know, these human artificial things being infrastructure. But we have green infrastructure, things like trees that are just as important to the continued existence of life in cities because we have to have shade from our trees.

26:15
David Klemp
We've got to keep our soils from eroding and our streets from flooding. And so slowing down and absorbing rainwater is a huge function of urban trees. So I think hopefully more and more people are going to realize just how important urban forestry is.

26:35
Sophia Magnanini
Definitely. And it's really interesting what you were saying earlier about, because I feel like when people think about climate change, they don't really think about how it's affecting the native plants in areas and how it might be moving those where they grow. And. But that's really interesting to think about and especially what you're saying with how in the future it might turn into more where we're reviving these older extinct species, which is just really cool to think about. And also it's just really important, like you were saying, because so many, especially with climate change and the crazy natural phenomena is like flooding all over. That's very important for trees to be in these areas and just to have them in general. So that was really cool, really interesting.

27:35
Sophia Magnanini
How can residents and listeners get involved in the program even if they don't have space to plant trees themselves? Know you were talking about the pay it Forward. Does that count if you aren't getting any trees, can you still donate money for that?

27:56
David Klemp
I will take your money. I will be happy to take your money. Yeah. So if you want a tree, certainly there's a form on our website. You can request a tree for your house or if you run an HOA in the Triangle and you want to try and do a kind of neighborhood wide planting, we can do that. But if you don't have room for a tree, as you mentioned, we would love donations, of course. Or feel free to come sign up to help at any of our volunteer events as well.

28:32
David Klemp
Because we have stuff going on pretty much throughout the year, whether it is during our tree planting season, which runs October through April or in the summer when we're going back and taking care of areas where we have planted trees, maybe taking out invasive species or remulching some things to help build up soil around the trees in a positive way. So there is something to do all year round. And we list all of our volunteer activities on activategood.org activate good. I'll plug another local non profit because I love doing that. Activate Good is a non profit that helps non profits find volunteers and volunteers find awesome volunteer opportunities. So they're awesome. And we list all of our volunteer stuff up online there. And then we also have a monthly newsletter. We don't like to spam people, so one a month should do it.

29:33
David Klemp
If you want to sign up for our newsletter and get that email once a month that's on our website as well, which, oh by the way is trees for the triangle.org try and keep it simple. But yeah, we would love to have, love to see new faces out planting trees with us, mulching trees with us. If you want to write a big fat check, I'll take that every day of the week.

29:58
Sophia Magnanini
Awesome. Well, as we kind of come up to the end of our chat, I just want to thank you again so much for coming in and telling us all about the trees for Triangle and what a wonderful organization that it is. And it's something that's really important that I feel a lot of people kind of don't think about. But it's really awesome seeing or hearing how you guys are evolving and just knowing that you guys are going to keep on evolving throughout the years. And my final question for you is, do you have a favorite tree species?

30:41
David Klemp
I have a standard answer for the question. I don't know that I truly have a favorite tree because whichever one I'm looking at usually tends to be the one that is my favorite. But my generally my favorite tree is a sycamore. I love when you get a mature sycamore and it's got just bone white bark. It's just really interesting. And then that fiery red, orange, yellow fall color is fantastic. So that's one of my faves for sure.

31:17
Sophia Magnanini
True.

31:18
David Klemp
But it's hard to pick one.

31:19
Sophia Magnanini
There's just so many. It's almost like picking a favorite song or something.

31:24
David Klemp
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

31:27
Sophia Magnanini
Thank you so much for everything, for coming in to talk and for letting giving our listeners such good information. As we come up on the end of our chat. I just want to thank you all again for listening. And I want to thank Dave for coming in and giving us such amazing information about Trees for the Triangle. It's a really important nonprofit and I think you guys should definitely try and get involved if you can. But thank you all for listening to Oak City Move once again. I'm your host, Sofia Magnanini, and if you're interested in listening to this episode again or to past episodes of the show, you can go to wknc.org podcast and make sure to tune into our show every other Monday on WKNC 88.1 FM Raleigh. Have a great day.